Text|Lieyun.com Sun Yuan.On the first day of December, it was rare in the investment circle to "** staged again.
According to the latest information from Tianyancha, Zhiyuan Robot (Agibot, abbreviation: Zhiyuan) completed the A+++ round of financing on December 1, and the investors are Lanchi Venture Capital, Zhongke Chuangxing, CDH Investment, Changfei**, C Capital, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Lijing Innovation, Sanhua Holding Group, Cornerstone Capital, Lingang New Area** and Ginkgo Valley Capital, a total of 11 VCs entered the market in this round.
Among them, Hillhouse Venture Capital, CDH Investment, and Lingang New Area ** are all raised, and Hillhouse has invested 3 times in 1 year, directly holding 41127%, ranking the largest institutional shareholder.
According to the financing process, since its establishment in February this year, Zhiyuan Robot has successively completed a total of 5 rounds of financing from angel round to A+++ round, and the "A round plus" alone has been financed 3 times.
*: Screenshot of Tianyancha.
In fact, as early as September, Jerry, who was close to this round of financing, revealed that Zhiyuan Robot has completed a new round of financing and is waiting for delivery, and said that this round of financing is over-raised for Zhiyuan, and it is even difficult for investors to invest in it, forming a situation where everyone rushes to "follow the elements".
Because the project party will choose the attribute of money, not all the money, let alone such a hot project."
As far as valuation is concerned, as far as Jerry knows, it has risen very fast, but because the valuation base is already very large, the increase is not high, and the previous valuation has not doubled, and a new round of financing is on the way, which can be described as very "sought-after".
AI large model + humanoid robot, "Huawei Genius Boy" has 5 rounds of financing a year, and why Zhiyuan Club can set off a grand occasion of 5 rounds of financing in the investment circle, we have to start with its co-founder, Peng Zhihui, who is known as "Zhihuijun" and "Wild Iron Man".
Zhihuijun, who was born in Anji, Jiangxi Province in 1993, recorded his hands-on ability during his studies at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. And this has also witnessed his journey of gaining the halo of well-known KOLs in the science and technology circle step by step, the top 100 UP of station B, the "Wild Iron Man", and Huawei's "genius boy".
After graduating from university, Zhihuijun first entered the AI laboratory of the OPPO Research Institute as an algorithm engineer and worked for almost two years. Then he entered Huawei in November 2020 with the title of "genius boy", and his annual salary was the highest of the three grades of 2.01 million yuan.
At Huawei, Zhihuijun has been working for almost two years. In December 2022, he posted that he was very happy in the past few years at Huawei, and he would always regard himself as a member of Huawei, but "although the gentleman fights Chen, he is brave", so he is going to pursue the career he loves and dreams.
So in February this year, Zhihuijun co-founded Zhiyuan, which means "intelligent humanoid robot", and put his career on the embodied intelligence of the 2023 tuyere.
In fact, from the 40s of the last century to the 20s of this century, robots have gone through four stages, and are currently in the stage of intelligence.
A year ago, Li Feifei wrote an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, pointing out that the three directions of computer vision development have given robots the imagination of embodied intelligence, and Tesla's humanoid robot "Optimus Prime" has given a possibility of mass production of humanoid robots.
After Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang shouted that "the next wave of AI will be embodied intelligence", the venture capital circle concretized intelligence under the explosive ChatGPT, using the form of humanoid robots as a major solution.
Zhiyuan, who has Zhihuijun as a co-creator and CTO, directly launched the AI large model and humanoid robot with embodied intelligence, which can be said to be directly facing the "wind" and ushering in the enthusiastic pursuit of the primary market.
In March, Hillhouse Venture Capital joined hands with MiraclePlus to throw an olive branchSubsequently, in April, it was directly financed at the beginning of the month and at the end of the month, and BV Venture Capital, Matrix Partners, CDH Investments, and Gaorong Capital were added as shareholders. Not only that, Zhiyuan Robot has also attracted local state-owned assets such as Shanghai Huanxin Phase I Private Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership) and Shanghai Sinan Park Branch Private Equity Management.
After this round of financing, it is reported that the market valuation of Zhiyuan robot has reached more than one billion US dollars, which means that it will directly enter the ranks of billion-dollar "unicorns" in less than half a year. Before the financing news broke, Zhihuijun uploaded a newly designed wheel-legged robot - Nezha (Nezha)** on station B in April
From August, BYD, Wofu Venture Capital, and Lanchi Venture Capital came to help, and now 11 VCs are together, and the record of becoming a unicorn in 5 rounds in 1 year and half a year can be said to be a phenomenal event in embodied intelligence and even the venture capital circle.
Of course, such a financing "hurricane" is also supported by Zhihuijun's real kung fu.
Nearly half a year after its establishment, Zhiyuan's embodied intelligent robot "Expedition A1" took a steady step on the stage of the press conference and made its official debut: 175cm high, 55kg weight, maximum pace of 7km h, 49 degrees of freedom of the whole body, 80kg of the whole machine, and 5kg of maximum load of a single arm.
At the scene, Zhihuijun introduced a series of core components and their technical indicators developed by Zhiyuan: the weight is only 1The 6kg core joint motor PowerFlow, the dexterous hand skillhand with 12 active degrees of freedom and 5 passive degrees of freedom, and the self-developed robot runtime middleware system Agiros.
In addition to the breakthrough of hardware bottlenecks, the language task model WorkGPT large model with tens of billions of parameters and the embodied intelligent brain EI-BRAIN have become super plus points of Zhiyuan.
The former makes full use of the huge prior knowledge base and strong general understanding ability of the language and image large model, and realizes the complex semantic multi-level reasoning ability, which is the so-called "chain of thought".The latter is based on task data feedback and has the ability to continuously self-learn Xi strengthen in the process of robot task execution.
In short, when players from all walks of life were still competing for their bodies, Zhiyuan spent half a year doing his brain and body together, and even did a good job.
Zhi Huijun said that he plans to control the cost of the entire robot hardware within 200,000 yuan, and quickly enter the commercialization next year, first applied to the field of industrial intelligent manufacturing, and then gradually go to the family to assist workers, scientific researchers and family members to complete various tasks.
Looking for the white moonlight in the heart, the VCs with "heads and faces" have all come to invest in the brain-body combination of Zhiyuan, which can be said to be the focus of VCs that focus on humanoid robots and even embodied intelligence.
For Zhiyuan, Ma Jianping, the managing partner of Qihang Investment, who has been investing in robots, also gave a high evaluation, he believes that although the "Expedition A1" is not amazing enough, it is not easy to make a prototype within half a year and there are several small iterations, which also proves that the comprehensive strength of the team is strong and the execution is in place.
Their harmonic integrated joints, linear actuators, brushless planetary servos, coreless motors, articulated motors PowerFlow (equipped with liquid cooling cycle cooling system) and SkillHand are very technical. Making humanoid robots more human-like is the ultimate form of intelligent humanoid robots and the general form, which requires the brain and body to go hand in hand and cooperate with each other. ”
However, in terms of embodied intelligence research and development, Ma Jianping said that not everyone can rush in to do it, and investors will not be easily fooled. He believes that the dilemma is first of all in the body of the humanoid robot, such as limited movement performance and control performance, high energy consumption, high cost, uneconomical, and the need for underlying technological innovation.
The body is the first step, and the brain is the second step, but the second step is much ahead of the first step, and it seems uncoordinated at the moment. Breakthroughs in algorithm software such as large model chatgpt are often jumping, but the breakthrough in hardware is not so fast, which first requires theoretical exploration, innovation in structure and materials, technological evolution, and breakthrough in energy, and then precision manufacturing and integration, engineering, and mass manufacturing also need to grind, especially some key components are particularly stuck, such as servo motors, reducers, etc., which cannot catch up in ten or twenty years. ”
Of course, this does not mean that the "brain" is simple.
He further said that embodied intelligence requires large models, especially humanoid robots need multimodality, LLM (large language model), VLM (visual-language model), VNM (visual navigation model), LLM + VLM + VNM three models are combined with each other to achieve perception and reasoning, cognition, understanding and interaction - improvisation", but the most critical in this direction is also the capture and training of data, some fine data must be combined with scenes, such as hands, arms, legs, Waist and other degrees of freedom control.
Perception, control, execution, and interaction in general scenarios should be fine, for example, Tesla migrated the intelligence of the car to the humanoid robot, but the humanoid robot is bipedal after all and needs to interact and exchange with the physical world, which needs to be polished in combination with the body. ”
Ma Jianping said that in the process of intelligent humanoid robots, he also looked at many projects but did not do it for a long time, until he met the national bionic laboratory from Jilin University, and the academician led the Yuequan Technology.
This from bionics, anatomy, materials science, mechanics, mechanical and electrical engineering, electronics, mathematics, software and other aspects to Ma Jianping to show a new humanoid robot map, with the "bionic tension body" as the theoretical basis combined with the existing humanoid robot in servo motors, actuators, reducers, sensors on the advantages of the built-in new bones, joints, muscles, ligaments, the formation of a unique drive system, transmission system, executive system, so that Ma Jianping with the investment in August this year into the angel round.
In addition to Yuequan Binic, Fourier Intelligence also last year's Softbank Vision No. 2**, Prosperity7 Ventures and Yuanjing Capital's 400 million yuan D round of financing, striding towards the humanoid robot track, its GR-1 launched this year is an electrically driven humanoid integration, 1 meter tall, 40 joints in the body, can walk quickly, avoid obstacles, go up and down slopes, and resist impact interference.
At the same time, Dreame Technology, which received the D+ round of investment from Mingyun Capital in May this year, also launched the second generation of the general humanoid robot and the bionic quadruped robot dog EAMEONE at the end of March this year.
Behind the pursuit, there are nearly 30 institutions such as Shunwei Capital, Xiaomi Group, IDG Capital, CPE Yuanfeng, Dachen Caizhi, Yunfeng**, Kunlun Wanwei, etc., there are nearly 10 VCs behind Fourier Intelligence, and nearly 20 VCs behind Zhiyuan Robot.
*: Lieyun.com.
Regarding this current situation, an investor once quipped, "I haven't been able to see the opportunity to run, and it's not good to invest, but now when I enter the market, if I can run out, it's YYDS." And frankly admitted that the valuation is actually "speculated" very high now, but if it is "speculated", it will continue to rise.
But some VCs said that this carnival has just come to 11 o'clock at night, and there is still a long time before the industry sees the light of day. "As soon as the new concept came out, everyone rushed up and made a fuss, and it was a very high, but also darkest moment. To make an investment, you still need to bet on a market with high growth potential in the future with a reasonable **. ”
It is worth noting that most of the players on the current track are still in the physical stage, and many players and investors believe that "brain" self-development is not just needed at the moment.
Gu Jie, the founder of Fourier Intelligence, once said that the company should be a humanoid embodied leader with dexterous action ability, but the brain will work with universities or other AI teams to build a commercial intelligent AI model.
In this regard, Ma Jianping agreed, at least for the time being, humanoid robot integrators do not need to complete the "brain", and can cooperate with large model companies of large manufacturers.
Zhang Shipu, vice president of investment at Yuanjing Capital, also revealed before that for all players, the "brain" or "ontology" can be specialized in doing a good job, and it already has investment valueBut in the end, mature companies will definitely do a good job of integration, a bit like the relationship between Autopilot and EV.
The brain is able to align complex modal data with the robot's 'proprioception' architecture, while ensuring that the body can perform stably, and doing any one of these things well requires a lot of technology stacks. It is actually a way to make more effective use of social resources by doing what we are good at in the early days, and then carrying out business cooperation to build the entire ecosystem. ”
With the pre-sale of the Fourier Intelligent GR-1 General Humanoid Robot, Zhihuijun gave the plan for the commercialization of Zhiyuan Robot next year, and the fire of the track has been ignited under the simultaneous development of R&D + financing.
Jerry is a pseudonym).