Gasgoo Munich- Juqiao Industrial has recently closed a 100 million yuan Series A funding round, according to Gasgoo Embodied Intelligence.
Ant Group led the round, with existing shareholders—including Lingyi Venture Capital, Weihai Gangrong, and Qingdao Hexin—doubling down. Inve Capital acted as the long-term exclusive financial advisor. The capital will scale production and delivery of fabric-based electronic skin, advance tactile and multimodal technology, and expand applications in robotics, home furnishings, and healthcare.
Founded in November 2023 in Weihai, Shandong, the startup is tackling a deceptively simple challenge: weaving sensors directly into fabric.
Official figures show Juqiao Industrial has served more than 400 clients, including over 200 in the embodied intelligence sector. It has delivered nearly 10,000 tactile gloves to date.
Those numbers carry significant weight in the embodied intelligence race.
When a human hand holds a paper cup, fingers adjust grip as the wall deforms. Inserting a part into a hole, the hand corrects course based on subtle resistance. Lifting an object, shifting contact points cue the body to rebalance weight.
Robots lack this intuitive sense of touch, making them prone to mishaps—crushing eggs or dropping objects entirely.
Image Source: Juqiao Industrial
Juqiao Industrial’s tactile gloves aim to restore that precise tactile feedback to machines.
When a human wears the gloves to perform tasks, the system records contact areas, force shifts, and movement details alongside first-person video. That once-abstract "feel" becomes data that models can actually use.
The multimodal data captured by Juqiao’s gloves is now feeding cutting-edge model research worldwide, driving large-scale training that fuses touch with vision.
For tactile data to serve as training material at scale, however, the collection tools must first clear a high bar.
A glove must allow natural movement, capture rich detail, and endure repeated use. These three competing constraints form what the industry calls the "impossible triangle."
Juqiao’s solution lies in materials and structure. It assigns conductivity, pressure resistance, and load-bearing roles to separate fibers, weaving them into a sensing network. Contact triggers local deformation, shifting conductive pathways; circuits read these shifts and convert them into tactile data through calibration and algorithms.
Put simply, the sensor is no longer a layer sandwiched inside film—it is the fabric itself.
The company’s full-palm glove features hundreds of sensing points per hand with a minimum spacing of 2 millimeters. It detects forces as low as 0.01 newtons and is compatible with motion capture and teleoperation.
The latest "Skin 2.0" adds detection for force direction, shear force, and slip tendency. Multi-layer sensors are under 0.8 millimeters thick, while single-layer flexible tactile products can be thinner than 0.3 millimeters. Crucially, the system maps raw readings into mechanical values with ±5% consistency—moving tactile sensing from binary signals to quantifiable data.
Juqiao built its own production line in Weihai, retrofitting spinning, dyeing, and weaving equipment. After thousands of trials, the yield rate now exceeds 95%, and rapid prototyping takes less than a day.
The company is also developing a data acquisition system that fuses touch with first-person vision, supported by SDKs, visualization software, and training tools.
Image Source: Juqiao Industrial
Fusing sensing capability directly into the fabric opens new design possibilities for flexible electronic skin.
Beyond gloves, Juqiao has introduced robotic arm skin and is expanding to torso and sole coverage, allowing robots to sense full-body contact during handling and collaboration. It is also weaving sensors into everyday products: partnering with mattress and sleep-tech firms to monitor movement, posture, and breathing; working with ergonomic chair brands on comfort and support; and collaborating with automakers on occupant monitoring, adaptive seating, and pressure detection.
Yet the electronic skin sector heats up quickly—and risks homogeneity.
For Juqiao, securing Ant Group’s 100 million yuan investment clears the hurdle of production capacity and delivery. The real test is turning "a piece of sensing cloth" into replicable, profitable products at scale.
About Seeds Discovery:
Gasgoo’s Seeds Discovery column aims to build a platform connecting startups, industry partners, investors, and local governments to empower the entire supply chain. Since its launch, the column has been dedicated to identifying standout companies, technologies, and business models driving the intelligent transformation—fostering the growth of industrial innovation.
