Unitree Robotics has secured 1 billion yuan ($139 million) in a Series B2 round participated by the likes of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan, deeptech venture capital firm Source Code Capital, and CITIC Securities-affiliated Goldstone Investment.
Existing shareholders including Shenzhen Capital Group, the venture investment vehicle of the Shenzhen government; China Internet Investment Fund (CIIF), a 100-billion-yuan ($15.8 billion) fund set up by China’s Ministry of Finance and the Cyberspace Administration of China; and Chinese investment firms Winreal Investment and Dunhong Capital Management re-upped in the extended financing round.
The proceeds will be used to finance the product R&D, and business and team expansion, according to a release published through the deal’s sole financial advisor Evering Capital on Thursday.
Before founding Unitree, the firm’s founder and CEO Wang Xingxing first developed a robotic dog named XDog for his master’s thesis. The quadruped robot and its videos became viral across the internet prompting Wang to cut his tenure short at Chinese drone maker DJI Technology and start Unitree in 2016.
The Hangzhou-based firm, which started out targeting consumer-facing quadruped devices, has since branched into industrial applications—its recent release of industrial-grade quadruped robot Unitree B2 is one example. Unitree B2 can be used in various industries including industrial automation, power inspection, emergency rescue, industrial inspection, education, and research.
The firm had snapped up “several hundred million yuan” ($15.6 million) in a Series B financing round led by major VC firm Matrix Partners China and Dunhong Capital Management in April 2022.
Unitree’s fundraising milestone comes at a time when an ageing population and rising labour costs have prompted the country to ramp up industrial automation. With the country gushing in capital towards the industrial robotics sector, China surpassed the United States for the first time in terms of robot density in 2021 as the number of operational industrial robots per 10,000 workers across the manufacturing industry hit 322 in the year, according to a report published by non-profit group International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
In 2022, the number of operational industrial robots per 10,000 workers hit 392 in China; while the US recorded only 285. South Korea and Singapore topped the ranking, recording 1,012 and 730 units respectively in the year, per IFR’s data.