In Just 6 Months, 4 Rounds of Funding: West Lake University Professor's Venture Takes Off
Westlake Robotics, an embodied artificial intelligence company, has completed its Series A financing round within just six months and a total of four rounds, raising a cumulative 5 billion RMB. The investor lineup includes prominent institutions such as SAIF Partners, Xiaomiao Langcheng, Henan Investment Group Huirong Fund, and Haiyuan Fund, forming a high-quality capital matrix comprising state-owned, industrial, and leading venture capital.
The rapid and intensive capital injection reflects strong market confidence in the company's technological approach, product deployment capabilities, and long-term potential. The newly acquired funds will be primarily allocated to the research and development of a unified large model for humanoid robots and the establishment of a talent cultivation base for embodied AI.
Founded in 2024, Westlake Robotics originated from the industrial transformation of pioneering achievements in AI and robotics at Westlake University. The founding team is led by Wang Donglin, a leading figure in China's embodied AI and robot learning field, and co-founder Zhang Yue, an expert in natural language processing. The core R&D members hail from top-tier tech companies like Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent, and Huawei, as well as prestigious global universities.
The company follows a fully self-developed strategy integrating a "universal brain + humanoid body-specific cerebellum + proprietary humanoid hardware." It is one of the few domestic enterprises capable of holistically connecting the three core areas of embodied AGI cognitive reasoning, full-body motion control, and humanoid hardware. Its proprietary technologies include the General Motion Model-GAE system for low-latency teleoperation and motion generalization, and a dual pre-trained architecture for general and body-specific processing to bridge cognitive reasoning and physical movement.
In 2026, Westlake Robotics launched its self-developed humanoid robot "Westlake o1," completing the full technology chain from underlying algorithms to pre-trained models and hardware. The company has secured nearly 100 million RMB in orders, with applications in scientific research, education, data collection, and power inspection. Future targets include high-risk industrial inspection, post-disaster search and rescue, and remote precision assembly.
The company has also partnered with the Longyou County government to establish a county-wide real-scenario training base for humanoid robots, aimed at collecting high-quality motion data and validating technology in authentic environments. With the latest funding, Westlake Robotics plans to further advance its core model development and talent acquisition strategy, accelerating progress toward the "GPT moment" for embodied intelligence in China.
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