PokeBot, the Beijing home-robotics upstart founded in April 2026 by Tsinghua-trained researcher Xu Huazhe, has closed a nine-figure Pre-A round co-led by Shunwei Capital and Matrix Partners — the company's second raise in three months.
Who's Writing The Checks
Ubiquant Ventures, Junshan Capital, SEE Fund, Liepin Investment, Yuannuo Capital and ETC Capital joined the round. Existing backers Yunqi Partners, Xiaomi Strategic Investment, Highlight Capital, InnoAngel Fund and Oriental Fortune re-upped. PokeBot's initial angel financing, led by Yunqi Partners, ran into the tens of millions.
Betting On Manipulation, Not Locomotion
PokeBot is squarely aimed at robotics' hardest problem: manipulation. Its stack combines a proprietary World Action Model, real-world reinforcement learning and bespoke data-collection hardware, with the ambition of learning physical cause-and-effect relationships that transfer across tasks. The team has publicly demonstrated long-horizon jobs including cooking Mapo Tofu, folding clothes, threading zip ties and tying sachets.
China's Embodied-AI Money Firehose
PokeBot arrives in a market that has broken every historical funding record: China's embodied-intelligence sector raised roughly $13.9 billion across 322 deals in the first half of 2026, a five-fold jump year on year. Recent large deals include Noin Intelligence's $74M Angel++ and Discover Robotics' $100M Angel+. On the public markets, Unitree's Shanghai IPO priced at a $9 billion valuation after a 2,700x oversubscription.
Reporting based on coverage from Gasgoo, DealStreetAsia and TechNode.