Company founder Zhu Qiuguo says the new funding would be used for research and the recruitment of top robotics talent Deep Robotics - one of the "Six Little Dragons" from Hangzhou, the capital of eastern Zhejiang province - on Tuesday said it had raised 500 million yuan (US$70 million) in fresh funding from a group of Chinese investors.
According to the company's statement, its latest round of financing was led by CMB International, China Asset Management and funds under state-owned telecommunications network operators China Telecom and China Unicom.
Deep Robotics founder and CEO Zhu Qiuguo, who also serves as an associate professor and PhD adviser at Zhejiang University, said the new funding would be used for research and the recruitment of top robotics talent.
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The start-up, whose Hangzhou-based peers include Unitree Robotics and DeepSeek, was founded in 2017 and has become one of China's leading developers of quadruped robot dogs and humanoids.
Deep Robotics aimed to make its machines "intelligent assistants" that would be deployed in various industries, Zhu said in the statement.
Its latest funding round underscored the sharpened focus of venture capital firms and institutional investors in China's fast-growing robotics sector.
China and the United States accounted for 75 per cent of all venture capital investment in the robotics space over the past six years, allowing them to build a formidable lead in the crucial emerging industry, according to a study by the analytics firm GlobalData.
Other co-investors in Deep Robotics' Series C funding round included Vision Knight Capital, China Integrated Circuit Investment Fund, Zhejiang University Education Foundation and Shougang Holdings.
Existing shareholders that also took part in the funding round were Fortune Capital, Qianhai Fangguhou, the CCTV Media Convergence Fund, the Beijing Robotics Industry Development Investment Fund and Hua Ying Capital.
Deep Robotics, however, faced a severe talent shortage that had hindered the commercialisation of its research and development efforts, said co-founder and chief technology officer Li Chao at October's Bund Summit Financial Forum in Shanghai.
Li said at the time that the company was seeking top talent in the algorithm area to help fine-tune its humanoid robots and better serve clients in the manufacturing sector.
"We must seize the opportunity to make our products not only usable but also reliable in some industrial scenarios," he said.
Deep Robotics recently posted several videos on X that featured its robots in various environments. Its remote-controlled quadruped robot dog, Bobcat M20, was shown exploring a volcano in Inner Mongolia.
The company's first humanoid robot, DR02, was filmed calmly meditating in a makeshift lotus position in the forest.
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