Gasgoo Munich- Beijing Zhongke Huiling Robot Technology Co., Ltd. ("CASBOT") recently closed an A++ round totaling hundreds of millions of yuan.
The round drew joint investment from Zhilai Investment, Yonghua Investment, Maotian Investment, Oriza Chkunion, Guoke Kezhi, and Luning Investment. Proceeds will bankroll mass production and deliveries, R&D on embodied "brain" technology for critical scenarios, and market expansion.
It marks CASBOT's second major fundraise in months. In June 2025, the company closed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A round led by Lens Technology.
"Embodied intelligence is shifting from concept to industrial validation — we prioritize commercial deployment in real-world scenarios," said Tang Zheng, managing director at Yonghua Investment, explaining the firm's rationale.
In his view, the sectors CASBOT targets — smart mining and apparel manufacturing — offer clear demand and quantifiable returns.
Body + Brain + Dexterous Hand: Full-Stack In-House R&D
Founded in 2023, CASBOT is a key startup spun out of the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Founder and Chairman Zhang Zhengtao — a CAS researcher, doctoral supervisor, and director of the CAS Industrial Vision Intelligent Equipment Technology Engineering Lab — leads a core team that previously tackled micro-target precision assembly and compliant assembly for the C919 passenger jet.
Drawing on the institute's research legacy, CASBOT has architected a full-stack tech system: hardware, embodied brain, and dexterous hand.
Image source: CASBOT
On the software side, the company built its own embodied large model, CAS-brain./ Grounded in a vision-language multimodal architecture, it weaves together embodied agents, world models, and reinforcement learning — linking hardware, real-world interaction data, model training and inference, and autonomous evolution into a single pipeline.
For industrial use, it rolled out a lightweight CASBOT PA (Perception-to-Action) model. The pipeline runs from visual perception to action generation, kinematic processing, and physical execution. It trains on a single consumer-grade GPU and features real-time error correction with failure retries — lowering the bar for deployment and iteration on factory floors.
Under current plans, CASBOT PA will be open-sourced in the second half of 2027.
On the hardware side, CASBOT develops everything from end effectors to complete machines. Its lineup spans full-size humanoids (CASBOT 01 and 02), an industrial wheel-arm robot (CASBOT W2), a half-size humanoid (CASBOT Mini), and a robotic band (CASBOT BAND) — covering four domains: industrial, commercial, special-purpose, and embodied base platforms.
End-effector operations are driven chiefly by a joint venture, Zhongke Huisi. Formed by CASBOT, Lens Technology, and Hunan Huaxia Investment Group, the JV focuses on dexterous hands and has already released three models — L1, D1, and M1 — covering tactile perception, precision manipulation, and flexible grasping.
Beyond that, CASBOT developed its own XR teleoperation system and a physical-robot/human data-acquisition platform, continuously stockpiling operational and real-world interaction data to feed model training and hardware-software iteration.
Shoemaking Orders Top 400 Million Yuan as Deployment Spans Three Sectors
Beyond its full-stack tech, CASBOT has already proved its commercial model in apparel manufacturing.
In 2025, the startup landed multi-million-yuan orders from several top shoemakers, cementing its place in the industry's top tier. This year, its order book for embodied shoemaking robots has surpassed 400 million yuan, with production scheduled for thousands of units.
Image source: CASBOT
Apparel remains a stubborn holdout for industrial automation. Flexible materials like shoe uppers and fabrics shift with every cycle — edges, folds, and positions rarely align. Add in frequent style changeovers, and traditional automation relying on fixed jigs and preset trajectories struggles to keep up.
CASBOT's wedge into the market: using embodied manipulation to close that gap.
As early as August 2025, CASBOT's first shoemaking robot was deployed to the factory of Fujian Xinbai Sports — a Putian apparel leader and longtime supplier to Puma and Skechers — for a proof-of-concept trial on an insole-stamping line.
This October, the CASBOT PA perception-to-action model entered real-world validation at the same plant, covering tongue insertion, outsole stamping, and sole pressing. Meanwhile, the wheel-arm CASBOT W2 robot is being tested on sole-feeding tasks.
Test results show outsole stamping at 7 seconds per unit and sole pressing at 18 seconds per pair. CASBOT estimates the annual return on investment for current projects at roughly 50% to 70%, with a payback period under two years.
Throughout the process, the factory feeds the technology. Success and failure data across different materials and styles flow back into the model; the updated model then returns to the line for validation, closing the loop from real tasks to data, training, and physical verification.
Beyond apparel, mining and energy as well as entertainment and exhibitions are focal points.
Mining presents a uniquely harsh environment: underground passages are dusty, damp, and cramped, with spotty communications — a genuine stress test for robot reliability.
In June 2025, CASBOT formed a joint venture with Shandong Zhaojin Group and Shandong Zhongkuang Group — Zhongke Shenkuang Embodied Intelligent Robot (Yantai) Co. — targeting high-risk underground operations and safety patrols. A mining explosives-charging robot is now undergoing field training and validation in an operational mine.
Image source: CASBOT
In entertainment, the CASBOT BAND robotic ensemble debuted this February with four full-size CASBOT 02 humanoids. The group has since moved from the Beijing Spring Festival Gala to stages at the Zhongguancun Forum, the World AI Conference, and the World Robot Conference.
Since August, the band has held a daily residency at a Qingdao robot 6S experience store — shifting from a one-off demo prop to an operational product delivering sustained entertainment services.
Around formats like experience stores and commercial operation pods, CASBOT has signed framework and procurement agreements with operators. It is also exploring sales, leasing, and scenario-based service models.
"The value of embodied intelligence must ultimately be proven in the real world," Zhang said. CASBOT's mission, he added, is to put robots into factories and mines, taking on high-risk, high-intensity, and repetitive tasks.
With the latest round closed, CASBOT will push its product lineup and tech iterations across four domains: industrial, commercial, special-purpose, and embodied base platforms. Using education, research, and entertainment as beachheads, it plans to leverage the CASBOT Mini, CASBOT 02 Lite, and CASBOT BAND to expand into the Middle East, Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America.
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