Humanoid robotics track reappeared 100 million yuan financing.
Recently, Shanghai Zhuo Yide Robotics Co. completed 100 million yuan financing.
"After the university fully empowered our team with the ownership of scientific and technological achievements, Zhuo Yide completed the A round of financing." Li Qingdu, a professor at Shanghai Institute of Technology and founder of ZhuoYiDe, said, "The reform of full empowerment clarifies the ownership of intellectual property rights and the long-term partnership between the university and enterprises, which brings great confidence to our team and investors."
Founded in 2021, Li Qingdu, founder of Joyride, has been engaged in humanoid robotics-related research for 20 years. in November 2015, he led the team to develop the "Walker 1" robot to walk 134.03 kilometers, which was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. Since then, he has started to develop the "Xiao Bei" humanoid robot, and has completed four iterations. "Xiao Bei 4.0" is 1.6 meters tall, weighs only 28 kilograms, and has a range of up to 6 hours. This lightweight, safe, low-power robot has great potential to enter homes and factories.
With the rise of big models of artificial intelligence, humanoid robots have become a popular track for entrepreneurship. Last year, under the lead of the Technology Transfer Center of Shanghai Polytechnic University, Li Qingdu approached a number of investment institutions, but the financing process was slow. Liao Yuqing, director of the Technology Transfer Center of Shanghai Polytechnic explains, "Investors are very optimistic about Zhuo Yide team and technology, but because some of the company's intellectual property rights are shared by the school and the scientific research team, they are worried that the property rights are not clear, and do not dare to invest."
In response to this problem, the Shanghai Institute of Technology has launched a reform of empowerment of scientific and technological achievements this year. in July, the "Shanghai Institute of Technology Empowerment of Scientific and Technological Achievements Reform Pilot Management Measures" was released. According to this document, Li Qingdu team signed a contract with the university to obtain a job invention patent, a proprietary technology of all the empowerment. Zhuo Yide will pay 20% of the third-party evaluation price of the scientific and technological achievements to SIT as the consideration for the empowerment; as the company is registered in SIT National University Science Park, the consideration for the empowerment is reduced to 10% of the evaluation price; in the future, the company will entrust the project and other ways to the school to "feed back", forming a win-win long-term cooperative relationship.
This reform can be said to have immediate effect, two months after the signing of the contract, Zhuo Yi DE has been a number of organizations with a total of 100 million yuan of investment.
At present, Zhuo Yi DE robot mainly focuses on scientific research and education, interactive services, family recreation and other scenarios to provide intelligent robotics solutions, is committed to creating the "safest and most practical humanoid robot".
At the end of 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guidelines for the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots", which put forward the establishment of an innovation system by 2025, the entire product to reach the international advanced level, as well as the comprehensive strength of the industry to reach the world's advanced level by 2027, and other development goals, pushing the humanoid robotics industry to a new height.
In February of this year, Goldman Sachs even raised its estimate of the size of the global robotics market in 2035 to 38 billion U.S. dollars, and expects shipments to increase fourfold to 1.4 million units. Musk also made a commitment at the shareholders meeting, said Tesla will start "limited production" of Optimus Prime robots in 2025. He said that the popularity of humanoid robots will be 10 times that of cars.
Today, the development of our humanoid robot industry has exceeded the expectations of countless people. The whole society is full of confidence in the humanoid robot industry. According to incomplete statistics of China Robotics Network, only in the first half of 2024 (January-June) the domestic investment and financing events of humanoid robots have reached 13, with a total financing amount of more than 2.5 billion yuan.
We also expect that China's humanoid robotics industry will be able to connect to intelligence and move toward the new, providing strong new quality productivity to boost the high-quality development of China's science and technology and empowering thousands of industries.