Spirit AI

Robotics · Embodied AI · China Tech

Funding

Chinese humanoid startup Spirit AI reportedly raised $670M at $2.9B valuation

Its investors are also its customers, since CATL and JD.com already run its wheeled humanoids on real production lines.

• Spirit AI has raised more than $670 million since its January 2024 founding in Hangzhou, and is now valued at roughly 20 billion yuan (about $2.9 billion), co-founder Gao Yang told Reuters.
• The 300-person startup was co-founded by CEO Han Fengtao, a former Rokae CTO, and chief scientist Gao Yang, a Tsinghua robotics professor, to build embodied-AI 'brains' for humanoid robots.
• Its wheeled Moz1 humanoids are already deployed in the tens on production lines at battery maker CATL and inside JD.com fulfillment centers, hitting 90% success on structured tasks.
• Spirit AI trains its models on real-world 'dirty data' gathered by roughly 1,000 sensor-wearing contractors performing everyday tasks, a method it says cuts data costs by 90% versus simulation.
• Gao expects a 'GPT-3.0 moment' for robot brains by mid-2027, when spoken instructions could reliably translate into new physical tasks, but says home deployment is still at least eight years off.
• The disclosure lands amid a broader Chinese embodied-AI funding wave, with rivals Shutu and D-Robotics closing sizable rounds the same week.
• The scale of capital behind Spirit AI signals a growing bet that humanoid robotics' real bottleneck is now software intelligence rather than hardware, which could let data-rich Chinese firms leapfrog labs still reliant on simulation.