Alibaba invested in humanoid robots

Zhuji Power completes a new round of strategic financing

On May 17, Shenzhen Zhuji Power Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhuji Power"), a general robot company, completed a new round of strategic financing. The specific amount has not yet been disclosed. The investor is Hangzhou Haoyue Enterprise Management Co., Ltd.

It is worth noting that Hangzhou Haoyue is a joint actor company of Alibaba (China) Network Technology Co., Ltd., and the shareholdings of the two companies are consistent: Taobao (China) Software Co., Ltd. holds 57.5947% of the shares, Zhejiang Tmall Technology Co., Ltd. holds 35.7470% of the shares, and ALIBABA.COM CHINA LIMITED holds 6.6583% of the shares.

In addition, Hu Xiao, the legal representative of Hangzhou Haoyue, is also the managing director of the strategic investment department of Alibaba Group. The bet on Zhuji Power marks Alibaba's further deepening of its layout in the field of intelligent robots under the humanoid wave .

As a new player in general-purpose robots, Zhuji Power went viral last year with its "ground DJI" product demonstration and a huge financing of 200 million yuan, showing its strong technical accumulation and development prospects. In addition to replenishing its "ammunition depot", Alibaba's investment this time will provide it with financial and industrial support from product implementation to technical pre-research. The two parties are expected to jointly explore application scenarios that can be commercialized and promote the development of embodied AI represented by general-purpose humanoid robots.

Embodied Intelligence “New Force”

The development of artificial intelligence has achieved breakthrough progress in many fields such as natural language processing, computer vision, and speech recognition. However, it still faces many challenges in truly commercializing it and empowering production and life scenarios.

At present, most artificial intelligence systems are still in a "bodyless" state and cannot interact directly with the real world environment. Intelligent systems applied to physical entities such as robots are called "embodied intelligence". It requires the coordination of multiple links such as perceiving the external environment, understanding semantics and making decisions, and performing tasks through physical movements. It places extremely high demands on comprehensive capabilities such as computing power, algorithms, and hardware, and involves many technical problems such as perception, cognition, and control. It is the "last mile" that artificial intelligence must face after it develops to a certain stage.

Humanoid robots are undoubtedly the most intuitive and representative carriers of embodied intelligence at present.

In recent years, the rapid development of industrial robots , service robots and other fields has given rise to the "golden age" of the robotics industry. However, most robots are currently special-purpose robots with low intelligence levels, and still rely on manual operation or preset program instructions. What Zhuji Power is committed to is to make robots "smarter" and become "intelligent entities" that can make independent judgments, decisions, and actions.

Zhuji Power was founded in 2022 and focuses on the research, development and manufacturing of embodied intelligence and legged robots. Its products include humanoid bipedal, four-wheeled legged robots and related software and hardware solutions. Its implementation should focus on B2B and B2C fields such as automobile manufacturing, industrial inspection, logistics distribution, special operations, and home services.

Although the company was established not long ago, it has a deep technical foundation. Founder Zhang Wei graduated from the Department of Automation of the University of Science and Technology of China, and then received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. He is currently a tenured professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State University and a tenured professor at the Southern University of Science and Technology.

R&D personnel account for 80% of the company's employees. The core team comes from well-known domestic and foreign universities such as the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Hong Kong, and Peking University. Since 2005, the company has cooperated with well-known scholars and authoritative institutions at home and abroad to carry out cutting-edge technology research in robots, software algorithms, and AI, and has published more than 130 high-level papers in top international journals and conferences.

Relying on a solid scientific research foundation and continuous technological innovation, Zhuji Power has made a series of breakthrough progress in the field of embodied intelligent robots.

The company adopts a hybrid approach of "Model-based and Learning-based", focusing on breakthroughs in terrain perception and complex terrain adaptability of humanoid bipedal robots, and strives to create a legged robot platform that can move stably on all terrains.

Not long ago, the company released the latest "upgrade" of the four-wheeled legged robot W1 through social platforms. In the video, the W1, which is changeable and versatile, breaking the inherent form, can now achieve upright movement on two legs. This is also the first case in China where a "four-legged" robot becomes a "two-legged" robot.

In addition, Zhuji Power also has the world's leading core technologies such as perception-based motion control algorithms, legged robot reinforcement learning algorithms, and fully self-developed high-performance legged joints. It has pioneered the "perception-based motion control algorithm", which allows robots to get rid of the limitation of "blind walking" and realize the first dynamic stair climbing function based on real-time terrain perception in China.

In addition to strong technical skills, the company has also formed a full-stack management team responsible for commercialization, engineering productization, AI cutting-edge technology and organizational management. Among them, the joining of Zhang Li, former COO of WeRide, and Dr. Pan Jia, a leader in the robotics and artificial intelligence algorithm industry, will undoubtedly bring new impetus and opportunities to Zhuji Power.

Zhang Li was in charge of the company's strategic operations, market development, media relations, and the implementation and operation of the autonomous driving business in the Chinese market during his tenure at WeRide. He was a key task in WeRide's journey from 0 to 1 and from a startup to a unicorn. Now, he will be responsible for the strategic planning, channel development, marketing and government relations of Zhuji Power's domestic and overseas business, and strive to replicate the past successful experience in the field of autonomous driving in the field of humanoid robots.

So far, Zhuji Power, which was established two years ago, has completed three rounds of financing. In the angel round + Pre-A round of financing in October last year, well-known VCs such as Oasis Capital and Lenovo Capital jointly invested about 200 million yuan in the company, which aroused widespread discussion in the industry.

This investment from Alibaba not only injects fresh blood into the company, but also marks that Zhuji Power has entered a new stage in the development of the robotics field. With sufficient financial support, a clear technical route, a top scientific research team and an experienced commercialization team, Zhuji Power is striving to realize the landing of general AI robots in the real world.

Alibaba's Robotics Map

In fact, Alibaba has been planning in the field of robotics for a long time.

As early as 2017, Alibaba established the consumer robot company Tmall Genie; previously, it co-invested with SoftBank in the humanoid robot Pepper; Alibaba DAMO Academy released the logistics robot "Little Donkey" in 2020 to "compete for jobs" with food delivery boys; Alibaba's Cainiao Logistics has deployed various intelligent robots on a large scale, playing an important role in improving the degree of automation of warehousing and logistics...

Alibaba's independently developed large language model "Tongyi Qianwen" has also been connected to industrial robots. It can be foreseen that Alibaba's computing power advantages in robot perception, decision-making, interaction, etc. will continue to increase in the future.

From the perspective of the industrial structure, the robotics industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation. The status of traditional industrial robot manufacturers has been shaken, and technology giants have taken the opportunity to enter the industry and seek disruptive innovation. They have the key advantages of mastering algorithms, talents, and huge scene demands to reshape the industry.

Compared with simply engaging in product development, Alibaba is expected to play a greater role in the overall ecological level. Whether it is cloud computing, large models, chips or system solutions, Alibaba is remarkable. How to integrate ecological chain resources and empower partners through open innovation will be a key move for the development of Alibaba's robotics business.

For e-commerce and logistics industries, express delivery and warehousing, there is a strong demand for automation. With the efficient and strong collaboration capabilities of robot technology, it is expected to overcome the shortage of human resources and achieve unprecedented efficiency improvement. This investment in Zhuji Power is not only a continuation of Alibaba's investment in the robot industry chain, but also adds chips for Alibaba in the field of general AI robots.