Gasgoo Munich- On February 24, Spirit AI said it has closed two consecutive funding rounds in quick succession, raising close to 2 billion yuan in total, a sign of accelerating investor interest in embodied intelligence and next-generation robotics in China.
Image source: Spirit AI
The latest financing attracted a broad mix of heavyweight investors, spanning top-tier financial capital, strategic industry players and state-backed funds. Participants included Yunfeng Capital, a leading state-owned investment institution, Chaos Investment associated with Ge Weidong, and HongShan, alongside industrial investors such as Synstellation Capital and TCL Capital. State-owned capital vehicles from Chongqing and Hangzhou took part, and strategic investors including 360 Capital and HouXue Capital also joined.
Existing shareholders doubled down as well, with ShunWei Capital, Prosperity7, Fortune Capital, etc. all committing fresh capital.
Including early-stage backers, Spirit AI has assembled what it describes as a rare, full-spectrum industrial ecosystem for embodied intelligence. Its shareholder base spans manufacturing leaders such as CATL and TCL, logistics and retail players represented by JD.com and China Merchants Innovation Investment Management, as well as consumer electronics giants Huawei and Xiaomi. This structure gives the company early access to real-world deployment scenarios and data streams—an increasingly critical advantage in training embodied AI systems.
The company said the new capital will be directed toward scaling its foundational embodied AI models and expanding real-world data pipelines, while deepening collaboration across its industrial partner network.
Founded in February 2024, Spirit AI focuses on building general-purpose embodied intelligence models aimed at unlocking new capabilities in robotics. Its in-house VLA model underpins the development of Moz1, a full-body force-controlled humanoid robot with 26 degrees of freedom. The robot integrates high power-density force-control joints and high-speed whole-body control algorithms, achieving a payload-to-weight ratio of 1:1, according to the company.
On the software side, the company drew attention earlier this year by open-sourcing Spirit v1.5. Designed for strong zero-shot generalization, the model can execute complex tasks—such as wiping surfaces, manipulating hinges and handling flexible objects—without additional training. Spirit AI attributes this to its "data pyramid" approach, which emphasizes large-scale pretraining on human internet video to deliver stronger performance with fewer parameters and lower computing costs.
In terms of commercialization, Spirit AI's humanoid robot "Xiaomo" has already been deployed at CATL's Zhongzhou production base, where it now serves as a core piece of equipment on the battery assembly line. The company says the robot has supported the zero-defect production of nearly 1,000 battery units, matching—or in some cases exceeding—the pace of skilled human workers. Elsewhere, Spirit AI's Moz robots have been introduced into JD.com retail settings, taking on customer interaction and product demonstration tasks. Building on this, the two sides are exploring how JD Cloud and the Joyinside large model can be rolled out across large-scale retail networks, linking model development more closely with real-world applications.
