Liu Songming

Who he is

Liu Songming is the newest star of China's PhD-founder wave. A chemistry-olympiad gold medallist who topped Tsinghua's computer science programme, he won the university's top undergraduate award and became first author on the RDT series of robot manipulation models, studying under professor Zhu Jun.

In December 2025 he registered LiberAI to build "physical world models." Four months later its dexterous two-handed robot was peeling bananas — a demo that stunned the industry. In under six months the company raised nearly 500 million yuan from Sequoia China, Meituan, Shunwei (Lei Jun) and ZhenFund.

Why he matters

Liu is the clearest signal that China's best AI students now choose robotics over pure software. His speed — from founding to nearly 500 million yuan raised in under six months — shows how fast capital moves when a top-PhD team ships a convincing demo. He speaks for a generation whose ambitions start at "world model," not "app."