Zhongji Innolight Leads Investment in a Tsinghua '90s Postgraduate
Shihe Robotics, a Chinese intelligent high-altitude robotics company, has completed a Series C financing round worth hundreds of millions of RMB. The round was jointly led by Qianggang Capital and Zhongji InnoLight, with participation from Guangxi Investment Capital, Guohai Securities, Junton Capital, and existing investor Fosun RuiZheng.
Founded around 2015 by Xu Huayang, a Tsinghua University Ph.D. graduate, the company has spent nearly a decade focusing on robotics for high-risk, high-altitude maintenance work. Starting from a specific application in ship hull derusting, which has achieved a dominant market share in China, Shihe has expanded into a wider product matrix serving scenarios in petrochemical storage tank maintenance, energy facility inspection, bridge infrastructure, and building façade cleaning.
CEO Xu Huayang emphasizes a hardware-first, commercialization-focused philosophy for the robotics industry. The company's strategy revolves around "one machine, multiple uses; complete process closure," aiming to deliver reliable value in real industrial settings rather than pursuing demos. It has served major domestic clients like COSCO, China State Shipbuilding Corporation, Sinopec, and Saudi Aramco.
Shihe is building its technological edge by leveraging vast, high-fidelity industrial data collected during operations. It is developing a vertical "Industrial World Model" in collaboration with top university labs. This model is tailored for complex, hazardous industrial environments, enabling robots to progress towards greater autonomy in perception, decision-making, and task execution.
In the context of the booming "embodied AI" field, Shihe positions its path as starting from structured, specialized industrial scenarios before moving to more complex environments. Concurrently, the company is accelerating its global expansion, with overseas revenue growing tenfold over two years. Xu aims for international markets to contribute half of the company's revenue within five years. The latest funding will support further technological development, product matrix expansion, and global market penetration.
marsbit07/21 02:42
