Robotera
Last reviewed
Sources
16 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v7 · 2,687 words
Improve this article
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
Suggest edit
CtrlK
Last reviewed
Sources
16 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v7 · 2,687 words
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
| Robotera | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Full name | Beijing Robot Era Technology Co., Ltd. |
| Chinese name | 星动纪元 (Xingdong Jiyuan) |
| Founded | August 2023 |
| Founder | Chen Jianyu |
| Headquarters | Tsinghua Science Park, Haidian District, Beijing, China |
| Industry | Robotics, Embodied AI |
| Products | Star1, L7, Q5, M7, XBot-L, XHAND1 |
| AI platform | ERA-42 vision-language-action model |
| Total funding | over $600 million (cumulative through May 2026) |
| Valuation | over RMB 10 billion, about $1.45 billion (early 2026) |
| Website | robotera.com |
Robotera (formally Beijing Robot Era Technology Co., Ltd.; Chinese: 星动纪元, Xingdong Jiyuan) is a Chinese humanoid robot company headquartered in Beijing that builds full-stack hardware and software for embodied AI, and it is the only humanoid robotics startup in which Tsinghua University holds direct equity.[1][2] Founded in August 2023 and incubated by Tsinghua's Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS), the company has raised more than $600 million at a valuation above RMB 10 billion (about $1.45 billion) and began thousand-unit humanoid deliveries in the second quarter of 2026, with reported revenue growth above 300% for that period.[3][6] Its work spans proprietary hardware (actuators, dexterous hands, full-body platforms), the ERA-42 foundation model for embodied intelligence, and application software for commercial deployment. Robotera describes itself as "the industry's only full-stack self-developed embodied AI" company, designing and manufacturing more than 95% of its core components in house.[1][3]
Robotera is one of the most heavily funded names in China's AI humanoid sector, alongside Unitree, UBTech, Fourier Intelligence, and AgiBot. Its best-known result is the Star1 humanoid, which in October 2024 ran at 3.6 m/s (about 12.9 km/h) across the Gobi Desert in what the company called a world record for bipedal humanoid running speed.[8][9]
Robotera was established in August 2023 by Chen Jianyu, an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University's IIIS, where he works inside the research group of Academician Yao Qizhi (Andrew Yao), a Turing Award laureate.[1][2] Chen holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, where he studied under Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He has published more than 50 papers at venues including NeurIPS, ICML, ICRA, and IROS, and was named to Forbes China's "30 Under 30" list.[1][2]
The founding team drew researchers from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, the National University of Singapore, and several Fortune 500 firms. Over 80% of employees work in research and development, and the company is headquartered in Tsinghua Science Park in Haidian District, Beijing.[2]
| Date | Milestone |
|---|---|
| August 2023 | Company founded; early prototype "Xiaoxing" debuts at the World Robot Conference |
| March 2024 | Releases the open-source reinforcement learning framework Humanoid-Gym on GitHub |
| May 2024 | XBot-L becomes the first full-size humanoid robot to climb sections of the Great Wall of China |
| August 2024 | Star1 launched as the first product-grade humanoid; XHAND1 hand debuts |
| October 2024 | Star1 sets a world bipedal speed record at 3.6 m/s during a Gobi Desert demonstration |
| December 2024 | Unveils the ERA-42 end-to-end vision-language-action model |
| Mid-2025 | Star1 demonstrates chopstick manipulation and stir-frying tasks |
| June 2025 | Q5 "Tiny-Waisted Pro" wheeled service humanoid launched |
| July 2025 | Series A round of nearly 500 million yuan (~$69 million) led by CDH Investments and Haier Capital |
| July 2025 | L7 bipedal humanoid unveiled, eventually clocking 14.4 km/h |
| November 2025 | Series A+ extension brings in roughly $140 million led by Geely Capital |
| Q1 2026 | $143 million strategic financing round closes (about 1 billion yuan) |
| CES 2026 | Showcases the full "Hexa-Core" robotics lineup, including L7, Q5, M7, and the XHAND series |
| May 2026 | New funding round of over $200 million led by SF Group; thousand-unit deliveries underway |
Robotera has raised more than $600 million in disclosed financing across angel, pre-Series A, Series A, Series A+, a strategic round, and the May 2026 round, reaching a valuation above RMB 10 billion (about $1.45 billion) by early 2026.[3][4][5] Tsinghua Holding Tiancheng Asset Management, Horizon Investment, Haier Capital, CDH Investments, Geely Capital, SF Group, HSG, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Investment, Alibaba, BAIC, and Lenovo have all participated.[3][4][5]
| Round | Date | Amount | Lead and notable investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angel | January 2024 | ~$13.9 million | Undisclosed |
| Pre-Series A | October 2024 | ~$42.17 million | Undisclosed |
| Series A | July 2025 | ~$69 million (nearly 500 million yuan) | CDH Investments, Haier Capital, Houxue Capital, Meridian Capital, Xianghe Capital, Zhejiang Fore |
| Series A+ | November 2025 | ~$140 million | Geely Capital, BAIC Capital, Alibaba, CDH Investment, Crystal Stream Capital |
| Strategic | Q1 2026 | ~$143 million (1 billion yuan) | Existing and strategic investors |
| New round | May 2026 | over $200 million | SF Group (lead), HSG, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Investment, CICC Capital, Jingming Capital, China Unicom funds |
In the Series A round, existing backers Crystal Stream Capital and Tsinghua Holdings increased their stakes.[5] The participation of Geely and logistics giant SF Group reflects how large Chinese industrial buyers are betting on humanoid platforms for factory floors and warehouse operations.[3][4]
Robotera's product line covers full-size bipedal humanoids, wheeled service robots, modular upper-body platforms for research labs, and standalone dexterous hands. The company markets the lineup as the "Hexa-Core" portfolio, anchored by the L7, Q5, M7, and the XHAND family.[6]
| Product | Type | Year | Key features |
|---|---|---|---|
| XBot-L | Bipedal humanoid (early R&D platform) | 2024 | 1.65 m height; used to validate Humanoid-Gym and the Great Wall climb |
| Star1 | Bipedal humanoid | 2024 | 1.71 m, 65 kg, 55 DOF, 3.6 m/s top speed, XHAND1 hands |
| Q5 | Wheeled humanoid service robot | 2025 | 44 DOF, slim waist, 7-DOF arms, XHAND Lite hands |
| L7 | Bipedal humanoid (next generation) | 2025 | 1.75 m, 55 DOF, 14.4 km/h top speed, 20 kg dual-arm payload |
| M7 | Stationary upper-body platform | 2025 | Pillar-mounted research configuration of the L7 upper body |
| XHAND1 | Dexterous robotic hand | 2024 | 12 active DOF, tactile array sensors, 25 kg gripping payload |
| XHAND Lite | Dexterous robotic hand (compact) | 2025 | 11 DOF, 10 Hz click response, 10 kg per-hand payload |
XBot-L was Robotera's first publicly visible full-size humanoid, standing roughly 1.65 m tall. It appeared in the Humanoid-Gym project paper as a sim-to-real testbed, walking on slippery surfaces and climbing stairs.[7] In May 2024 XBot-L was sent up sections of the Badaling Great Wall and became the first humanoid robot to autonomously ascend the steep stone steps, a demonstration that was widely covered in Chinese state media.[2]
The Star1 is Robotera's first product-grade humanoid. It stands 1.71 m tall, weighs about 65 kg, and uses 55 degrees of freedom. The robot is powered by proprietary 400 Nm joint motors with precision planetary reducers, high-precision encoders, and integrated drivers, reaching joint speeds as high as 25 radians per second.[8] In October 2024 two Star1 units raced through the Gobi Desert at 3.6 m/s (about 12.9 km/h) during a 34-minute run, navigating gravel paths, grass, and winding roads. The sneaker-wearing model edged out its barefoot rival, and the run set what the company called a world record for bipedal humanoid running speed, beating the roughly 3.3 m/s mark set earlier by Unitree's H1.[8][9]
In mid-2025 Robotera released videos of Star1 manipulating chopsticks, picking up dumplings, and stir-frying simple dishes. The footage was described in the press as a first for a humanoid robot and became one of the most circulated demonstrations of dexterous food handling that year.[10]
The L7, unveiled in July 2025, is the company's flagship next-generation humanoid: 1.75 m tall, 55 DOF, with 400 Nm joint torque and a swappable battery system. Robotera promotes the L7 as the fastest bipedal humanoid in the world, citing a sprint speed of 14.4 km/h (about 9 mph).[11] It can carry up to 20 kg with both arms, sort objects on conveyor belts, drive powered fasteners, and perform dynamic moves including spins and breakdance routines. Robotera describes the design as a "body plus brain" architecture, pairing high-torque actuation with the ERA-42 control model so that locomotion and fine manipulation share a single policy network.[11]
The Q5, launched on 30 June 2025, is a wheeled service humanoid nicknamed "Tiny-Waisted Pro" because its waist section is narrower than an iPhone. It stands 1.65 m tall, weighs 70 kg, and uses a 44-DOF body with a compact 582 mm by 519 mm footprint.[12] Each 7-DOF arm reaches up to 1.38 m and supports a 10 kg payload using the XHAND Lite hand. The Q5 fuses LiDAR and stereo vision for autonomous navigation, supports VR and sensor-glove teleoperation, runs over four hours on a 60 V battery, and is aimed at shopping malls, hotels, healthcare, and education. Robotera reported more than 100 letters of intent for the Q5 in the months after launch.[12]
The M7 is an upper-body-only variant of the L7 mounted on a vertical pillar stand. It is designed for research labs, data-collection rigs, and use cases where full mobility is not required, such as teleoperation training, imitation learning data capture, and high-throughput dexterous-manipulation benchmarks.[6]
The XHAND1 is a standalone five-finger dexterous hand with 12 active degrees of freedom: three each for the thumb and index finger, and two for each remaining finger. It uses a full-gear quasi-direct-drive transmission with decoupled, locally positioned active joints, giving the hand high back-drivability and supporting current-loop force control for research workflows. Each finger carries a high-resolution tactile array (more than 100 points) that reads three-dimensional force and temperature, and the hand can lift more than 25 kg in a palm-up grip.[13] The index finger has plus or minus 15 degrees of lateral movement for twisting tasks like unscrewing bottle caps.[13]
The XHAND Lite is a smaller variant used in the Q5 and other service platforms: 11 DOF, up to 10 clicks per second, 10 kg per-hand payload.[12]
ERA-42 is Robotera's end-to-end native large model for embodied intelligence, unveiled on 24 December 2024.[14] It is a vision-language-action (VLA) model that processes visual, language, tactile, and proprioceptive signals through a single neural network and produces motor actions directly, without separate perception, planning, and control modules.[14][15] Robotera calls ERA-42 "the world's first truly end-to-end embodied large model matched to a five-finger dexterous hand," pointing to more than 100 fine-motor tasks the system can perform with common tools, including tightening screws with a screwdriver, hammering nails, righting overturned cups, and pouring water.[14]
The company reports that ERA-42 can learn new manipulation tasks in roughly two hours from minimal demonstration data, eliminating the need for pre-programmed skills, and that its repertoire keeps growing through continuous data collection across deployed robots.[14] ERA-42 powers both the bipedal platforms (Star1, L7) and the wheeled Q5, giving the product line a shared cognitive layer.[15]
In March 2024 Robotera released Humanoid-Gym on GitHub, an open-source reinforcement learning framework for humanoid robots. It targets sim-to-real transfer using reward shaping and domain randomization tuned for bipedal locomotion, and integrates with the MuJoCo simulator. The project was validated on Robotera's own XBot-S and XBot-L platforms walking on slippery surfaces and climbing stairs, and has since been adopted by external academic and industry teams.[7]
Robotera has built much of its public profile through high-visibility demonstrations rather than purely technical papers:
| Event | Date | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| World Robot Conference, Beijing | August 2023 | Early "Xiaoxing" prototype unveiled, a few weeks after incorporation |
| Great Wall climb | May 2024 | XBot-L ascends Badaling stone steps autonomously |
| Gobi Desert race | October 2024 | Star1 reaches 3.6 m/s in a side-by-side run between two units |
| Chinese New Year demos | Early 2025 | Star1 demonstrates chopsticks and stir-frying |
| CES 2026, Las Vegas | January 2026 | "Hexa-Core" lineup including L7, Q5, M7, and XHAND series shown to U.S. audiences |
Robotera was not among the headline finishers in the April 2026 Beijing E-Town humanoid half-marathon, where Booster Robotics, Unitree, and Honor's "Lightning" robot took the leading spots, but the race helped fuel investor and media interest in the wider Chinese humanoid sector.[16]
Robotera's go-to-market strategy combines pilot deployments with industrial buyers and direct sales of research-grade hardware to universities. Reporting and company statements name early users including Samsung, Geely, Renault, Lenovo, Haier Smart Home, TCL, and Riamb (Beijing) Technology Development.[2][5] Haier is collaborating with Robotera on a home-service robot, while Riamb is testing Star1 in industrial logistics tasks.[5]
Deliveries scaled quickly during 2025 and into 2026:
Robotera's hardware has also been adopted as a research platform by Nvidia, Apple, and Boston Dynamics, mainly for dexterous-hand and embodied-AI experimentation according to reporting around the May 2026 funding round.[3]
Robotera competes inside a crowded Chinese humanoid robotics field that includes Unitree, Fourier Intelligence, UBTech, AgiBot, and XPeng Robotics. Three threads distinguish it: a Tsinghua tie that gives preferential access to research talent and Tsinghua-affiliated capital,[1][2] vertical integration of more than 95% of core components in house,[3] and a tight coupling between the ERA-42 VLA model and the five-finger XHAND family that positions the company for fine-manipulation use cases rather than locomotion alone.[14] The thousand-unit shipping milestone in Q2 2026 is the first sustained signal that this strategy can move from demos to factory floors.[3]