Founders & Key Figures

Wang Xingxing

Founder, Unitree Robotics · b. 1990 · 王兴兴

The post-90s founder who turned cost-engineered quadrupeds into the world's best-selling humanoids. Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025 — the global leader — and its G1 became the first mass-produced humanoid to cross 10,000 units. Its H1 sprinted at 10 m/s in 2026. Wang filed Unitree for a Star Market IPO that cleared in a record 73 days.

Peng Zhihui

Co-founder, Agibot · aka "Wild Iron Man" · 彭志辉 / 稚晖君

The Huawei "genius" who turned a 2-million-yuan salary offer into one of China's hottest robotics startups. Agibot, founded in 2023 with former Huawei VP Deng Taihua, reached a 15-billion-yuan valuation in three years, overtook Unitree in H1 2026 shipments (~8,400 units) and is heading for a Hong Kong IPO. Peng's famous "358 plan": 10 billion yuan revenue by 2027, 100 billion by 2030.

Zhang Wei (Will Zhang)

Founder, LimX Dynamics · 张巍

The SUSTech professor who gave up a tenured position at Ohio State to found LimX Dynamics in 2022. A Purdue PhD and motion-control researcher, he aims to make LimX the "NVIDIA of embodied intelligence" — quadruped and wheeled-legged robots with a deep motion-control core, not an AI-platform shell.

He Wang

Founder & CTO, Galbot · 王鹤

The Stanford PhD (advisor: Leonidas Guibas) and Peking University assistant professor who founded Galbot in 2023. Within three years Galbot raised 7B+ RMB across six rounds, making it one of China's best-funded embodied AI startups. In 2026 he won the Beijing Youth May Fourth Medal, the only embodied AI figure honored that year.

Jiang Zheyuan

Founder, Noetix Robotics · 姜哲源

The 1998-born Tsinghua PhD dropout whose N2 humanoid finished 2nd/3rd at the 2025 Beijing Humanoid Half-Marathon. He then launched "Bumi" — a consumer humanoid priced at 9,998 RMB, one of the cheapest full humanoids on the market. Noetix appeared on the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala.

Gao Jiyang

Founder & CEO, Galaxea AI · 高继扬

The former Waymo senior engineer and Momenta executive director who founded Galaxea AI (星海图) in 2023. A Tsinghua electronic-engineering alumnus and USC computer-vision PhD, he reached unicorn status in 18 months with four funding rounds. Galaxea positions itself as an embodied foundation model for multiple robot form factors.

Zhou Jian

Founder, UBTECH · 周剑

The most persistent salesman in humanoids. Zhou sold his house three times and his cars three times to keep UBTECH alive before it became the world's first listed humanoid-robot company (HKEX, December 2023). Its Walker S series now targets 5,000 shipments in 2026 — a bet that factory floors, not living rooms, will pay first.

Gu Jie

Founder, Fourier Intelligence · 顾捷

Started in rehabilitation robotics before pivoting to humanoids — a detour that gave Fourier unusually disciplined actuator engineering. Its GR-1 (2023) was one of the first mass-produced full-size humanoids, followed by GR-2 and GR-3. Backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Saudi Aramco's Prosperity7, Fourier has raised roughly US$190 million.

Zhao Tongyang

Founder, EngineAI · 赵同阳

The man kicked by his own robot. Zhao bet a decade on robotics in 2016, sold his quadruped startup to XPeng in 2020, then restarted from scratch in 2023 with barely a year of living expenses. His new company, EngineAI, hit a 10-billion-yuan valuation and is heading for a Hong Kong IPO. His robot T800 made headlines by kicking him across a showroom.

Guo Yandong

Founder, AI²Robotics (Zhipingfang) · 郭彦东

A rare founder with elite research-lab credentials plus hands-on experience in EVs and smart devices. His company pursues end-to-end VLA (vision-language-action) models, and its "Aibo" robot is already working in automotive, semiconductor and biopharma plants. His Dalianite rules: factories first, living rooms later — and never sell robots to homes for profit in the near term.

Shao Tianlan

Founder, Mech-Mind · 邵天兰

A Tsinghua graduate who earned top honours in robotics at TU Munich and spent 3.5 years at a German robotics company learning the discipline of industrial reliability. In 2016 he founded Mech-Mind to build AI + 3D-vision "eyes" and "brains" for industrial robots. His "German engineering + Chinese AI" formula has grown the company to ~22% of the global AI+3D-vision guided component market.

Cheng Haotian

Founder, Gausium · b. 1985 · 程昊天

A Cambridge graduate who started building robots in 2013 — before "humanoid" was a buzzword. He ignored the hype and kept making commercial cleaning robots. The "boring" bet paid off: a 14-billion-yuan valuation, robots in dozens of countries, and a Hong Kong IPO in progress. When the whole industry chased humanoids in 2026, he kept mopping floors.

Xia Yingsong

Chairman, Zhongding Co. · b. 1977 · 夏迎松

The second-generation industrialist who bought a French company for €1 and turned it profitable in a year. Over a decade he swallowed 10+ European tech firms and turned a rubber-gasket maker into a chassis-systems giant. Since 2024 he has bet the company on humanoid-robot joints — harmonic reducers, force sensors, micro-motors — with 300,000 units of orders already secured.

Zeng Fangqin

Chairwoman, Lingyi iTech · b. 1965 · 曾芳勤

The "Apple supply-chain queen" who started at 41 in a rented workshop with 80 employees. Her precision-manufacturing empire now supplies hundreds of components per smartphone. In June 2026 she listed Lingyi on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising HK$8.3 billion — and pointed the money at AI servers, EVs and, most ambitiously, humanoid-robot joints and skeletons.