Star Map's valuation doubles within two months to surpass 20 billion yuan, with embodied intelligence funding race intensifying

Ask AI · How can the founding team’s autonomous driving background help break through in the robotics business?

Another intelligent robot company has a valuation exceeding 20 billion yuan, doubling in value compared to two months ago.

On April 2nd, Xinghai Tu announced a new round of nearly 2 billion yuan in B+ round financing, with investors including Huadong Technology, Lens Technology, Silicon Core Investment, and other industry capital, as well as multiple “national team” funds such as Financial Street Capital and Beijing Innovation Capital, along with market-oriented funds like CICC Capital, PuHua Capital, and Hongtai Capital.

This financing occurred less than two months after the last round. On February 11th, Xinghai Tu announced the completion of a 1 billion yuan Series B financing, which propelled it into the trillion-yuan valuation camp.

According to publicly available information, Xinghai Tu has become the second unlisted startup in China’s embodied intelligence track with a valuation exceeding 20 billion yuan. The other is Galaxy General, also based in Beijing, which after completing over $300 million in financing in December 2025, reached a valuation of $3 billion (over 20 billion yuan).

It is worth noting that the total 3 billion yuan in recent rounds of financing for Xinghai Tu was conducted against the backdrop of the company’s completion of shareholding reform. Shareholding reform is generally seen as a prelude to preparing for an IPO.

On the business side, Xinghai Tu’s core product is a wheeled dual-arm robot, with the developer market being an important customer base. The company states it has “served more than 150 top global embodied intelligence developer partners.” In actual production fields, Xinghai Tu claims to have “deep cooperation with leading companies in industrial handling, logistics sorting, and commercial display industries.”

The founding team of Xinghai Tu has a distinctive background in the autonomous driving industry. Founders/Co-founders Gao Jiyang, Zhao Xing, and Li Tianwei all have experience working at autonomous driving companies Waymo or Momenta. Another former co-founder, Xu Huazhe, has left to start his own business, with his new company “PoKe Robot” focusing on robot applications in home scenarios.

In the past two months, leading players in embodied intelligence, including Xinghai Tu, have launched a “financing race,” quickly entering the trillion-yuan valuation camp with large-scale financings often exceeding 1 billion yuan. According to Southern Metropolis Daily reporters, at least six new startups with valuations of over 100 billion yuan have recently emerged in the embodied intelligence track: Xinghai Tu, Zhihui Pingfang, Qianxun Intelligent, Variable Robots, Xingdong Jiyuan, and Pasini Perception Technology. Including Galaxy General, Zhiyuan Robots, and Yushu Technology, there are at least nine embodied intelligence companies valued at over 100 billion yuan.

Regarding this “financing race,” Zheng Hualiang, partner at Dunhong Capital which invested in Yushu Technology, recently wrote: “Some companies say they feel helpless; competitors are valued at over 10 billion yuan. Although they have dozens of billions in cash on hand, and the interest from bank savings alone can almost support their teams, their technology and capabilities are much better than others. Yet, they are desperately raising funds, so they can’t fall behind.”

Despite the aggressive fundraising by leading players, because the technological route of embodied intelligence has not yet converged, capital’s enthusiasm for early-stage new projects in embodied intelligence has not been fully suppressed. A batch of new players such as Ji Jian Power, Gerson Robotics, Manifold Space, LiberAI from ZhiXian Technology, and Wujie Power have recently gained industry recognition through large-scale financing publicity.

Reported by: Yang Liu, N Video Reporter, Southern Metropolis Daily