Tencent leads the investment, YunJing aims for IPO, embodied intelligence remains a "hot cake"

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

A humanoid robot that dances the axe dance with Jia Kangkong, priced at 188,000 yuan, has recently been mass-produced and launched. It comes from Shenzhen Zhongqing Technology, similar to Hangzhou Yushu Technology, and is also a humanoid robot company.

Since the beginning of this year, the embodied intelligence track, including humanoid robots, has become extremely popular. Although well-known investor Zhu Xiaohu criticized its unclear commercialization and exited related investments, embodied intelligence, seen as a pathway to AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), will not easily lose investors' enthusiasm for entry.

Internet giant Tencent is one of the active players. After recently investing in Zhiyuan Robotics, Tencent has also invested in YunJing. Wall Street News learned that YunJing Intelligent has recently officially completed a financing of 100 million USD, with this round of financing co-led by Tencent and the Beijing Robotics Industry Development Investment Fund, with Sci-Fi Fund and Ming Shi Venture Capital participating in follow-up investments.

YunJing's main products are currently floor cleaning robots and washing machines, but what truly attracted Tencent's investment is YunJing's layout in embodied intelligent products. It is understood that the funds from this round of financing will focus on the research and development of YunJing's embodied intelligent products and global market expansion, with the first embodied intelligent product expected to be released within two years.

Zhang Junbin, founder and CEO of YunJing, told Wall Street News that this round of financing is an important opportunity for YunJing's strategic transformation, as YunJing will transition from home appliance cleaning to embodied cleaning. "YunJing has the capability and confidence to provide truly mass-producible and commercialized products in the embodied intelligence track."

This is clearly a business story more favored by the capital market. To further expand its scale, YunJing also officially announced its listing plan on April 14, stating that it has officially launched a Pre-IPO round of financing, kicking off the final sprint before going public.

The continuous entry of capital and industrial companies reflects that even in the midst of "bubble doubts," embodied intelligence is still a highly regarded track. Driven by policy, industry, and technology, the embodied intelligence track has already blossomed, with humanoid robots, regarded as the best carriers of AI, expected to welcome their mass production year this year.

The "dawn moment" of global robot industrialization is getting closer, and this is a key battle for the dominance of "digitalization of the physical world," with no one wanting to be absent.

YunJing's Entry

The current smart cleaning industry is becoming increasingly competitive. As a leading player, if YunJing wants to break through its growth bottleneck, it must come up with disruptive innovative products.

Embodied intelligent products have become the direction YunJing is betting on.

According to Wall Street News, YunJing's developed embodied intelligent products mainly focus on home usage scenarios, primarily in cleaning and storage, positioning itself as a home embodied cleaning robot, expected to be launched by the end of 2026 or early 2027.

YunJing's first home embodied intelligent product will provide a one-click solution for cleaning and storage needs in three-dimensional home spaces, aiming for the robot to fully manage and truly free users' hands, becoming the real "iPhone moment product" in home cleaning scenarios In the view of Zhang Junbin: "Like the previous Cloud Whale sweeping robot products, this will lead a new round of disruptive innovation."

Zhang Junbin emphasized that Cloud Whale's positioning is to become a globally influential home service robot company, rather than an appliance company. Cloud Whale's technology and talent reserves can truly provide marketable and commercializable products in the field of embodied intelligence.

"In my opinion, this is the long-term value judgment that investors have on Cloud Whale."

It is reported that Cloud Whale began laying out embodied intelligence in 2021 and currently has reserves in core technology sectors such as AI binocular vision, robotic arms, human-computer interaction, and AI models.

Zhang Junbin pointed out that Cloud Whale's current high-end flagship sweeping robot, the Xiaoyao series, is already capable of "seeing," "thinking," and "communicating," and in fact, has already formed a prototype of embodied intelligence.

For embodied intelligent products, the importance of "eyes" is self-evident. As early as 2021, Cloud Whale began to lay out AI binocular vision technology and launched the Xiaoyao 001 equipped with AI binocular technology and the Xiaoyao large model in 2024.

Robotic arms are also a breakthrough attempt made by some home appliance companies in embodied intelligence. Earlier this year, Roborock and Dreame showcased their robotic hand products at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

However, Zhang Junbin pointed out that current robotic hand products are more explorations of cutting-edge technology, and the next "disruptive innovation" or "iPhone" moment in the smart cleaning category has not yet arrived.

Regarding the competitiveness in the field of embodied intelligent products, Cloud Whale is full of confidence.

Zhang Junbin believes that ground cleaning robot companies are the most likely path to becoming great companies in the field of embodied intelligence in the future. "The cleaning technology, binocular technology, battery safety technology, power systems, etc., that we have accumulated in the ground cleaning robot field will empower embodied intelligent products."

Market Potential

Embodied intelligence refers to the integration of artificial intelligence into physical entities such as robots, endowing them with the ability to perceive, learn, and dynamically interact with the environment.

Intelligent robots are one form of this, but broadly speaking, autonomous vehicles, wearable devices, and others are also representative terminals of embodied intelligence.

Among them, humanoid robots, as a typical representative of embodied intelligence, are regarded as one of the best carriers for achieving embodied intelligence, and the concept of humanoid robots is booming.

In 2025, embodied intelligence was mentioned for the first time in the "Government Work Report." The report proposed: "Establish a growth mechanism for future industry investment, and cultivate future industries such as bio-manufacturing, quantum technology, embodied intelligence, and 6G."

At the same time, policies related to embodied intelligence have been intensively released. For example, in February, Beijing and Shenzhen successively introduced action plans for embodied intelligence, both proposing to cultivate a trillion-level industrial scale by 2027.

Currently, more than a dozen provinces and cities, including Zhejiang and Shandong, have introduced policies to make embodied intelligence an important lever for promoting industrial upgrading.

It is not difficult to see that the government work report first mentioned embodied intelligence, and the resonance of policy support and industrial progress is expected to accelerate the mass production of humanoid robots.

Analysts from AVIC Securities pointed out that 2025 will be the first year of large-scale mass production of humanoid robots. Companies like Yushu, Figure, 1X, and UBTECH are making continuous progress, with leading manufacturers' shipment volumes exceeding a thousand units. Continuous domestic policy introductions will accelerate the industry from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 100, and embodied intelligence is expected to become a new engine for domestic economic growth GGll predicts that the market size of humanoid robots in China will reach nearly 38 billion yuan by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 61% from 2024 to 2030. The sales of humanoid robots in China will grow from around 4,000 units to 271,200 units.

Many industry leaders are also optimistic about the future of embodied intelligence. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has publicly stated that the era of robots has arrived, and embodied intelligence is the next wave of artificial intelligence. In the future, humanoid robots will become as common as cars.

He Xiaopeng, chairman of XPeng Motors, stated, "China's embodied intelligence will see a massive industry emerge in the next 5 to 15 years, similar to new energy vehicles, and will lead globally."

Zhang Zhengyou, chief scientist at Tencent and director of the Robotics X Lab, pointed out that in the long run, robots will definitely enter thousands of households, believing that, as predicted by Elon Musk, the number of robots in the future could reach 10 billion units; otherwise, Tencent would not have established a robotics laboratory.

Investment Boom

In the face of such a promising field as embodied intelligence, many tech giants and investment institutions are entering the market.

Since the end of 2022, with the wave of AI large models, embodied intelligence has clearly gained momentum. Entering 2025, with continuous breakthroughs in technologies such as AI large models, the industrialization process of embodied intelligence has significantly accelerated.

Domestic companies like YuShu Technology and ZhiYuan are continuously updating their latest progress, while overseas startups like Figure and 1X are releasing products in succession. Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, and XPeng have all announced increased investments in AI and embodied intelligence.

Analysts at Guojin Securities pointed out that in 2024, the robotics industry will mainly consist of major players, as robotics is a competitive field for large model companies, serving as an entry point for displaying global data and an exit point for commercial monetization. In 2025, the trend of open-source large models represented by Deepseek will accelerate, reducing the costs and barriers of brain technology, and robots as terminals will enter a flourishing state.

The investment boom in embodied intelligence remains high this year. According to incomplete statistics from the High-tech Industry Research Institute, there were a total of 27 financing events in the domestic embodied intelligence robot field in the first two months of this year, with a financing scale reaching 4.45 billion yuan. In just two months, the financing scale has approached the total amount for the entire year of 2024.

Additionally, according to the "2025 Development Research Report on the Embodied Intelligence Industry," China is actively laying out in the field of embodied intelligence, with over 100 related enterprises and total financing exceeding 10 billion yuan. Among them, service robots and intelligent manufacturing have become hotspots pursued by capital.

However, behind the capital boom in embodied intelligence, there are also concerns, with the foremost being doubts about the existence of a "bubble."

Last month, Zhu Xiaohu, a partner at Jinsha River Venture Capital known as the "unicorn hunter," overturned the table on embodied intelligence. In his view, the commercial path for embodied intelligence is still unclear, especially for humanoid robots, stating, "Who would spend over 100,000 yuan to buy a robot to do these tasks?"

Zhu Xiaohu admitted that he had invested in some early-stage embodied intelligence projects in the past few years, but in recent months, he has been exiting these projects. This is because the consensus has become highly concentrated, and valuations have risen very quickly, making embodied intelligence a field that early-stage VCs want to avoid Such pessimistic remarks undoubtedly douse cold water on the embodied intelligence sector.

Sun Fuchun, Vice President of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence and a professor at Tsinghua University, stated that the overall development of AI follows an S-curve—there will inevitably be a period of losses at the beginning, during which investors may lack the patience to continue investing.

In fact, many investors have a relatively tolerant attitude towards the "bubble" in the embodied intelligence industry.

Yao Ningbo, Managing Director of Kailian Capital, told Wall Street Insights that there is definitely a "bubble" in embodied intelligence, as valuations are too high compared to other sectors. However, even so, the current financing environment for embodied intelligence is better than last year, with companies like Yushu Technology and Zhiyuan now valued at over 15 billion, yet there is still a large amount of capital chasing them.

Moreover, Yao Ningbo mentioned that it actually depends on how one defines a bubble. If valuations remain high and can sustain themselves after going public, then it is not really a bubble. "In other words, a bubble is a retrospective concept that can only be judged over time."

Zhang Ying from Jingwei Venture Capital also believes that the robotics field is a "large sector with a hundred flowers blooming, and having some bubbles in the process is very normal," emphasizing that "over a longer time frame, the humanoid robot sector will definitely produce large companies."

Yao Ningbo also revealed that his company remains very positive about the embodied intelligence sector, currently engaging with major robotics companies and selecting good targets for investment.

Regarding the selection of targets in embodied intelligence, Yao Ningbo stated, "I personally place more emphasis on the intelligence (brain) aspect, while the small brain (mechanical control) is more manufacturing and industrial-oriented; once one company breaks through, others will quickly follow (similar to Android phones). The brain has a very high threshold, and I haven't seen any breakthroughs yet."

Clearly, although it is still challenging for embodied intelligence products to reach their "iPhone" moment, the positive progress in the industry and the future development prospects still excite investors.

The explosion of embodied intelligence may not be far off, but it also requires capital to have the patience for long-term technological breakthroughs