The largest embodied intelligence funding round of the second half of the year has emerged.
On July 14, the general-purpose humanoid robotics company LimX Dynamics announced the completion of its nearly $200 million Pre-IPO funding round. The investor lineup includes—IDG Capital, global AI hardware manufacturing leader Lens Technology, the pan-European diversified industrial and investment group GGG Group and Redstone VC, Walden International, Hefei Binhu Industrial Development Group, and other strategic investors.
Additionally, the UAE's Stone Venture continued its heavy investment across multiple rounds, while Oasis Capital, Cornerstone Capital, Nanshan Strategic Emerging Industry Investment, Shangqi Capital, Nio Capital, and several other existing shareholders made significant additional investments.
Thus, LimX Dynamics, one of Shenzhen's "Eight Great Vajras," has raised nearly $400 million in just half a year, reaching a post-money valuation of RMB 15 billion.
"In fundraising, we place more emphasis on a measured pace and long-term alignment of our shareholder structure rather than just stacking up numbers in the short term," investment community met Zhang Wei, founder of LimX Dynamics, in Shenzhen in early July. A professor at Southern University of Science and Technology, Zhang has researched humanoid robots for over a decade and founded LimX Dynamics in Nanshan, Shenzhen in 2022. Four years on, LimX Dynamics has built a fully self-developed brain system for humanoid robots and its skeleton—a three-layer technical architecture that integrates the cognitive, skill, and motion control layers. It has also created a diverse product matrix spanning from R&D to commercial interaction, making it a formidable Chinese competitor to Figure.
Holding thousands of overseas bulk orders, LimX Dynamics leaves a strong impression of its global nature. In March this year, the company already completed its shareholding reform ahead of schedule. According to informed sources, LimX Dynamics is steadily advancing its IPO progress.
Securing $400 Million, Valuation at RMB 15 Billion, with Renowned Global Capital Gathering
To some extent, LimX Dynamics' global DNA started with its founder, Zhang Wei.
This professor at Southern University of Science and Technology previously served as a tenured professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The Ohio State University. Having studied humanoid robots for over ten years, he led his team to achieve reinforcement learning-based walking for bipedal humanoid robots in indoor and outdoor environments as early as 2021—earlier than Musk's entry into humanoid robotics.
Over the past few years, the embodied intelligence arena has been bustling with noise, yet LimX Dynamics' fundraising pace hasn't been particularly fast. Each step, however, has been remarkable—In October 2023, it completed Angel and Pre-A rounds with entry from FreeS Fund, Future Capital, Oasis Capital, Legend Capital, and Kinzon Capital. In July 2024, Series A funding brought in strategic industrial investors like China Merchants Capital and SAIC Motor. In early 2025, Alibaba and Nio Capital joined—Alibaba's first investment in a humanoid robotics company. Nanshan Strategic Emerging Industry Investment also joined at this time. In July 2025, JD.com led a strategic investment round.
The real shift came in 2026. In the Series B funding round in February, the UAE's Stone Venture appeared for the first time, joined by Oriental Fortune Capital, Cornerstone Capital, Tianchuang Capital, GF Xinde, Hefei Innovation Investment, Guotai Junan Innovation Investment, China Securities, as well as industrial partners like Zhongding Sealing Parts, Guangyang Group, and Kyland Technology.
The latest chapter is the Pre-IPO round, equally star-studded.
The investment community noted that nearly 70% of this round's funding came from overseas institutions in Europe, the Middle East, North America, and other regions, including Middle East's Stone Venture, Silicon Valley's Walden International, and Europe's GGG Group and Redstone VC.
Such a globalized capital structure is relatively rare among domestic embodied intelligence companies. This implies that barriers for LimX Dynamics' products to penetrate overseas markets will be significantly lowered, accelerating its entry into global markets focused on Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
The entry of Lens Technology holds even greater strategic significance. A humanoid robot comprises roughly a thousand components. While the manufacturing threshold is lower than that of an entire vehicle, scaling up production, achieving aesthetic structural design, and ensuring precise assembly require support from a mature consumer electronics manufacturing system.
As a leader in the consumer electronics supply chain, Lens Technology is hailed as the "Crown Jewel of Chinese Manufacturing." Its backing enables LimX Dynamics to leverage the efficiency of the domestic supply chain while gaining high-end manufacturing quality control capabilities to support the delivery of an increasingly large volume of overseas bulk orders.
For a general-purpose humanoid robotics company aiming for stable mass production and global expansion, this is more important than merely securing funds.
Looking back over four years, LimX Dynamics' shareholder lineup has gradually taken shape, evolving from early-stage market-oriented funds to comprehensive industrial capital across the chain, and then to global investment institutions. Following the Pre-IPO round, the company's post-money valuation has climbed to RMB 15 billion, becoming yet another super unicorn exceeding RMB 10 billion among Shenzhen's "Eight Great Vajras."
Figure's Strongest Chinese Competitor
"The embodied intelligence company with the strongest AI product DNA." remarked an investor who has participated in multiple funding rounds when discussing impressions of LimX Dynamics.
This evaluation points to LimX Dynamics' self-developed, full-stack three-layer technical architecture and its rich product matrix applicable to diverse scenarios. Zhang Wei likens the three-layer architecture to a complete brain system.
The bottom layer, System 0, is the cerebellum, responsible for whole-body motion control. This is the area where LimX Dynamics established its earliest advantage. When most robots in the industry could only "walk blind" on flat ground, unable to adjust their gait based on real-time environmental feedback, LimX Dynamics' full-size humanoid robot could already navigate stairs based on real-time perception.
The middle layer, System 1, handles VLA/WAM skills for specific tasks like opening doors, reception, and delivery. In January this year, LimX Dynamics open-sourced the FluxVLA Engine, providing global developers with a standardized infrastructure for model training, iteration, and deployment. Based on this, developers' efforts can be redirected to model innovation itself, rather than repeatedly building underlying engineering, pushing the industry from "training one good model" towards "enabling everyone to train models."
The top layer, System 2, is the brain. In January 2026, LimX Dynamics released the embodied agent system COSA, enabling full-size humanoid robots to achieve a brain system that "can think, can act, and works while thinking."
This is not unfamiliar to the industry. The Silicon Valley humanoid robotics company Figure, valued at over $39 billion, also adopted a "System 0—System 1—System 2" hierarchical architecture in its Helix 02 system released in January 2026.
The two architectures appear similar but are fundamentally different. Figure's System 1 and System 2 remain end-to-end systems at the model level; LimX Dynamics believes that models are merely skills, while the system is the true brain—an agent operating system integrating cognition, memory, scheduling, skills, and whole-body motion control, rather than a single model.
In a sense, LimX Dynamics is becoming Figure's most formidable Chinese competitor.
In fact, on the timeline, LimX Dynamics is even ahead. As early as 2023, LimX Dynamics had integrated the brain and cerebellum, with practical validations like its full-size humanoid robot Oli autonomously picking up tennis balls and the Guangzhou Tower stair climbing challenge. Figure truly achieved whole-body control only in early 2026.
Their commercialization paths also started differently. Figure focuses on factories and warehouses, while LimX Dynamics chose to enter through commercial service scenarios.
Zhang Wei's logic for not initially targeting factories is that humanoid robots are ultimately meant for homes, and entering factories isn't the most efficient path. "This doesn't mean entering factories is wrong. It's a choice. Our robots will still be sold to factories, and we will provide technical support. We just won't choose factories for our own initial deployments."
Therefore, LimX Dynamics almost obsessively pursues "Serve People, Not Process."
This system is being validated through productization.
In May this year, LimX Dynamics launched the full-size interactive humanoid robot LimX Luna, standing 160cm tall with 27 degrees of freedom, targeting commercial service and interaction scenarios. Deliveries to domestic and overseas clients began in less than a month. LimX Oli, released in 2025, is positioned as a full-size general-purpose humanoid robot platform for scientific research and industry development.
The TRON series consists of multi-form embodied robots. TRON 2 features one main body capable of switching between three configurations: dual-arm, bipedal, and dual-wheeled-legged, and supports reconfiguration into humanoid and quadrupedal forms.
Overall, LimX Dynamics' entire product line has accumulated thousands of orders, more than half from overseas, with the first batch of several hundred units already shipped. The company is collaborating with global developers and ecosystem partners to promote commercial deployment in more scenarios, including scientific research and education, commercial services, all-terrain inspection, industrial applications, and construction.
A Chinese Embodied Intelligence Globalization Case, Initiating the IPO Race
"You cannot use linear thinking to project exponential changes," Zhang Wei repeatedly emphasized during this exchange.
Having experienced the rise and fall of multiple technology cycles, he believes the public habitually uses linear thinking to predict exponential developments, often overestimating the short term and underestimating the long term. In his judgment, the current stage of the humanoid robotics industry is comparable to GPT-3, standing on the eve of a full-scale industrial explosion.
As an inflection point approaches, the core competitive logic is also being rewritten. Technology may no longer be the sole barrier; mass production delivery and global channels are becoming new watersheds.
The gap is already beginning to show. Leading Western manufacturers are constrained by shortcomings in their local supply chains, leading to long delivery cycles and persistently high unit costs. Conversely, most domestic peers' prototypes can only perform standardized demos like walking or performances, with clear gaps in product maturity. Very few models can operate stably in complex, unstructured environments without remote control, and companies capable of achieving scaled batch deliveries overseas are exceedingly rare.
Having worked in the global robotics field for many years, Zhang Wei has firsthand perception of the competitive landscape. He believes the starting lines for the Chinese and American humanoid robotics tracks are roughly equal. However, China possesses the world's most complete hardware supply chain and advantages in rapid engineering iteration. In the long run, China will move further ahead.
"This must be won in China." Zhang Wei stated directly, but this does not mean development is confined to the domestic market. The competition in humanoid robots is a global game. To maintain long-term industry initiative, overseas expansion is essential. This is also the underlying logic behind LimX Dynamics' firm commitment to a globalization strategy.
LimX Dynamics has already validated the feasibility of this globalization path with product deployment and overseas orders. The company has built a complete robotics product matrix covering scientific research and commercial services.
At this moment, the heat in the humanoid robotics track is still rising, and the queue of companies sprinting towards IPOs is growing longer. The matter of going public has quietly become a race tied to survival—whoever can list on the capital market first will have a greater probability of staying at the table.
The bubble will eventually recede, and the point of market consolidation is approaching. By then, the divide between two types of companies will become increasingly clear: one type has only prototype demos, lacks stable orders, and relies on continuous fundraising for survival; the other possesses a complete technological loop, a user-centric product matrix, batch orders, and a healthy capital structure, capable of self-sustaining.
For LimX Dynamics, its differentiated humanoid robot brain, precise commercial product positioning, thousands of overseas bulk orders, coupled with a capital structure dominated by foreign investors, sets it apart distinctly from most players in the field.
Business registration information shows that LimX Dynamics quietly completed its shareholding reform in March 2026. It is reported that the company is steadily advancing its IPO process.
Certainly, the ultimate outcome for humanoid robots remains distant. But looking back years from now, perhaps this very moment is the watershed.
This article is from the WeChat public account "PEdaily" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Zhou Jiali
