Gasgoo Munich-Hangzhou Kelin announced on the evening of May 19 that it plans to acquire a 41.57% stake in Shanghai Kepler Robotics Co., Ltd. for up to 300 million CNY.
Prior to this, Hangzhou Kelin had already acquired and held a 9.43% stake in Kepler for 100 million CNY in self-raised funds, becoming a shareholder. That transaction was completed on December 31, 2025, through an equity transfer agreement signed with Yang Hua.
Once this latest transaction closes, Hangzhou Kelin will hold a combined 51% stake in Kepler, making it a controlled subsidiary.
That implies an overall valuation of roughly 720 million CNY for Kepler. In a sector where billion-CNY "unicorns" are emerging frequently, that figure attracts little attention.
What exactly is Kepler? And what is Hangzhou Kelin really after with this acquisition?
Who is Kepler?
Founded in 2023 by Yang Hua and Hu Debo, Kepler arrived just as the humanoid robot sector was beginning to gain traction.
Before Kepler, Yang founded Chunmi Technology, a smart kitchen appliance firm in Xiaomi’s ecosystem, and previously worked at Motorola. Co-founder and CEO Hu Debo held positions at top-tier tech firms like ZTE and Huawei.
Strategically, Kepler focuses on industrial-grade general humanoid robots, insisting on full-stack in-house development. It now achieves 80% self-sufficiency in core components, building strong technical barriers in areas like planetary roller screw actuators, high-power density drives, and whole-machine dynamics control.
Image Source: Kepler
Leveraging that deep component expertise, Kepler built the K2 "Bumblebee" humanoid robot. It boasts core advantages like heavy-load operation, long endurance, and low deployment costs, making it adaptable to scenarios ranging from smart manufacturing and warehousing to special operations and high-altitude work.
Specifically, the K2 Bumblebee stands 175 centimeters tall with 52 degrees of freedom across its body. Each dexterous hand offers 11 degrees of freedom; beyond flexible fingers, every fingertip contains 25 force touch points, while the wrist features six-axis force sensing.
The head is equipped with four infrared binocular 3D cameras, and the body carries over 80 sensors. This gives the K2 Bumblebee perception systems similar to human hearing, vision, touch, and force sensing.
To navigate diverse factory settings, the K2 Bumblebee uses a hybrid series-parallel architecture combining roller screw linear actuators with rotary ones. Energy efficiency hits 81.3%, delivering an endurance capability of "one hour of charging for eight hours of operation." Its human-like straight-knee walking allows for flexible obstacle avoidance in complex environments like logistics warehouses and manufacturing workshops. With a dual-arm load capacity of up to 30 kilograms, it can handle transport and loading tasks. Powered by a layered VLA+ model for semantic recognition, the robot also executes precise instructions for sorting, assembly, and showroom guidance.
The K2 Bumblebee has already entered the SAIC-GM logistics factory, Zhaofeng’s component production workshops, and Chunmi’s facilities. It also participated in the world’s first human-robot collaborative high-altitude welding operation, providing a verifiable, replicable model for high-risk industrial scenarios.
During the Lunar New Year holiday this year, dozens of K2 Bumblebees served as "special employees" at Chunmi’s factory. In the warehousing area, they efficiently handled workpiece gripping, loading and unloading, and bin moving, while also conducting patrol and anomaly monitoring. This systematically validated the robot’s reliability, stability, and ability to scale in complex industrial environments.
Building on that, Kepler announced a deep strategic upgrade this April: a full focus on building an embodied intelligence brain and the core track of force tactile data collection. By following a path of vertical generalization in industry and using real-world data to overcome intelligence bottlenecks, the company aims to push industrial-grade humanoid robots from hardware deployment into a phase of full-perception intelligent evolution.
Image Source: Kepler
Shortly after that announcement, Kepler released Kepler-OmniTac™—China’s first full-stack force tactile data acquisition solution natively adapted to the VTLA full-perception model.
Previously, mainstream industry data collection relied heavily on pure vision and virtual simulation. Robots could "see" the world but couldn't "touch" it. Yet in industrial settings, crucial information is often invisible: whether contact is stable, if force is appropriate, or if a material is soft or hard—details that only force tactile perception can capture. Pure vision solutions struggle to perform steadily and accurately in scenarios involving occlusion, reflection, flexible objects, or complex assembly.
Kepler-OmniTac™ was built to solve exactly this. Comprising Kepler’s self-developed data acquisition suit, the OmniVTLA dataset, and the OmniVTLA large model, the solution’s core breakthrough lies in data acquisition technology centered on force feedback exoskeletons and tactile feedback gloves. This allows robots to capture multi-dimensional contact data—such as pressure, friction, and force direction—while working. It enables simultaneous data collection, training, and evolution within real industrial scenarios.
The solution has reportedly completed proof-of-concept (POC) verification in real factories across the automotive, 3C, and smart logistics sectors. In typical tasks like precision assembly and multi-material gripping, its performance far exceeds that of traditional VLA models.
Overall, Kepler’s growth trajectory is clear and pragmatic: it does not chase trends, but focuses on industrial scenarios; it does not promote algorithms, but trains models with real data; and it does not rely on narratives for funding, but on gaining factory access to accumulate orders.
Behind the 400 Million CNY Acquisition: What is Hangzhou Kelin After?
The answer: building a full-chain technology system for embodied intelligence.
Hangzhou Kelin’s stronghold is the power sector, but it is also actively expanding into robotics, having self-developed core technologies like six-axis force sensors, dexterous hands, and motion control systems.
Reportedly, in 2025, Hangzhou Kelin sent samples to several leading target clients for trial.
This January, Hangzhou Kelin went further by establishing a wholly-owned subsidiary, Hangzhou Xingke Zaowu Robotics Co., Ltd., with a business scope covering smart robot R&D and AI hardware sales.
Through this acquisition, Hangzhou Kelin notes that Kepler’s self-developed embodied intelligence architecture, hybrid actuators, and in-house core component system can effectively fill its own technological gaps in humanoid robots. This creates an efficient complement to its existing strengths in six-axis force sensors and dexterous hands, accelerating the construction of a "perception-decision-execution" full-chain technology system and enhancing the engineering deployment capability and operational reliability of its core tech.
Even more critical is the scenario.
The biggest bottleneck in the humanoid robot industry right now is not a lack of advanced technology—it is the inability to find customers willing to place bulk orders. The deep client resources and network Hangzhou Kelin has accumulated in the power sector make it an ideal "initial deployment site" for humanoid robots.
Image Source: Kepler
Hangzhou Kelin is candid about this: leveraging its long-term engineering experience in smart perception and early warning, as well as intelligent O&M for energy equipment—and its high-quality client base—it can drive the scaled deployment of Kepler’s embodied intelligence technology in power and industrial O&M scenarios. At the same time, this pushes Hangzhou Kelin’s traditional business toward an upgrade into high value-added intelligent equipment.
However, there are two sides to every coin. While this deal looks like a win-win, it actually harbors multiple risks.
First, there is the uncertainty surrounding Kepler’s revenue.
According to Hangzhou Kelin’s announcement, Kepler posted revenue of just 4.34 million CNY in 2025, with a net loss of 66.94 million CNY. In the first quarter of 2026, revenue grew to 2.64 million CNY, but the company still recorded a loss of 17.09 million CNY.
As for Hangzhou Kelin, its 2025 financial report showed revenue of approximately 207 million CNY and a net profit attributable to shareholders of -3.05 million CNY.
With that scale, the financial pressure of supporting a subsidiary losing nearly 70 million CNY a year cannot be underestimated. Especially if Kepler’s commercialization falls short of expectations, Hangzhou Kelin’s profitability will take a noticeable hit.
Second, there is uncertainty stemming from management changes at Kepler.
Reports indicate that Kepler’s former CEO, Hu Debo, recently left to found a new company, "Suota Wujie," pivoting to the embodied intelligence brain track.
It is worth noting that Hu Debo was a key figure in taking Kepler from zero to one. His departure means the loss of a core member of the founding team.
Although Kepler’s new CEO, Song Hua, has taken the helm and led the release of the force tactile data acquisition solution and an A++ round of financing, the integration between the founding team and the listed company’s management—along with the alignment of technical roadmaps and decision-making rhythms—will take time to validate.
Moreover, the humanoid robot industry as a whole is still in the early stages of technology deployment and commercial exploration. Core component costs remain high, large-scale application scenarios have not fully opened up, and the profit cycle for the entire sector is generally long.
Therefore, Hangzhou Kelin’s ambition to rapidly achieve business transformation and secure a new growth pole through this controlling acquisition still faces a long exploration and many uncertain challenges.
