Chinese embodied-intelligence startup Dexmal is seeking a valuation of about 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) in an ongoing funding round, founder and chief executive Tang Wenbin told Bloomberg on Friday, August 21, 2026, on the sidelines of the World Robot Conference in Beijing. Talks are still open, and the amount being raised has not been disclosed.
An embodied-AI stack built for factories, hotels and offices
Founded in March 2025 in Shenzhen by a founding team drawn from Megvii Technology and Tsinghua University's elite Yao Class, Dexmal develops software and hardware for “embodied intelligence” robots — general-purpose systems that switch between tasks across factories, hotels, offices and homes. Previous financings, disclosed at the start of 2026, were led by Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant Alibaba Group, together with NIO Capital and AI foundation-model developer Z.ai (formerly Zhipu), which itself listed in Hong Kong in January.
China's physical-AI capital chase
The round is the latest sign of surging investor appetite for Chinese physical AI, on the same week the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games opens at Beijing's Ice Ribbon with 2,056 humanoid robots from 16 countries. Bloomberg's report notes that China now has more than 140 humanoid robotics companies at scale, and that Beijing has set aside investment funds worth more than $26 billion to bankroll the sector. City authorities and state-owned enterprises are already piloting robots in museums, event venues and even directing traffic.
A crowded and increasingly global field
Dexmal is pitching its round into a market that is bidding up almost every credible embodied-AI team. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick's Atoms raised $1.7 billion in July for industrial physical AI, UK-based Humanoid became Europe's first pure-play humanoid unicorn with a $152 million Series A, and RobotEra filed a Hong Kong IPO worth about $1 billion this month. North American robot orders, meanwhile, hit 8,940 units and $622 million in Q2 2026 — up 21.3 % in revenue year over year — with order value growing nearly five times faster than volume as buyers pay more per unit.
Reporting based on coverage from Bloomberg and PYMNTS.