Chinese VCs chase Gen Z embodied-AI founders as LiberAI closes angel+ round
What's the deal? Five Chinese robotics startups led by founders born after 2000 have raised massive rounds in quick succession, drawing top-tier venture firms into a fierce competition for young talent in embodied AI. The companies — OriginFlow, LiberAI, RoboParty, Inverse Matrix Technology, and Lingchu Intelligence — have collectively secured billions of yuan in funding within months of launching.
OriginFlow, founded by Tsinghua PhD student Qin Shentao, raised over ¥500M (roughly $70M) across angel, strategic, and pre-A1 rounds from Lanchi VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Oasis CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and others — all within a year of its August 2025 founding. One investor recalled meeting the team in the morning and issuing a term sheet that same afternoon.
LiberAI closed nearly ¥500M across seed through angel+ rounds, backed by Sequoia China, ZhenFund, Meituan Dragon Ball, and Shunwei Capital. RoboParty, founded by Harbin Institute of Technology undergraduate Huang Yi, completed multiple rounds totalling tens of millions of dollars, led by Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi's strategic investment arm.
Lingchu Intelligence stands out with ¥2B in combined angel and pre-A funding led by state-backed Xuhui CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, plus a later round from Guotou Pioneer. Inverse Matrix Technology raised over $10M in its first round from Hillhouse Ventures and Peking University-affiliated Yanyuan Ventures.
Why now? The embodied AI sector is shifting from end-to-end action models toward "Physical AI" and world models — a technical paradigm where these young founders have a natural edge. Having grown up immersed in large language models and multimodal AI, they approach robotics "intelligence-first, engineering-second," as investors describe it.
The timing also reflects a scarcity problem. As genuinely differentiated projects become rare in China's primary market, competition among funds has shifted from picking deals to chasing founders. One young entrepreneur put it plainly: world models and end-to-end robot intelligence gave his generation its first real seat at the table.
What could go wrong? Most of these startups focus on foundational infrastructure — world models, data collection, reinforcement learning platforms — rather than shipping products. Commercial viability remains unproven. An investor at a leading dollar fund noted that first-generation robotics companies raised large sums but often lacked the ability to achieve real technical breakthroughs, raising questions about whether this new wave will fare differently.
Li Jun, managing partner at Yanyuan Ventures, cautioned against reading too much into the youth narrative. "Whether a startup succeeds has no necessary link to the team's age," he said. "Age itself is just a label."
The signal: The investor mix here is as telling as the founders' ages. State-backed vehicles like Xuhui Capital and Guotou Pioneer are co-investing alongside market-driven funds such as ZhenFund and Shunwei Capital, signalling that Beijing views embodied AI as a strategic priority, not just a venture bet. With OriginFlow already at breakout stage and LiberAI in early growth — both less than a year old — the velocity of capital deployment suggests Chinese VCs fear being locked out of a generational platform shift more than they fear backing pre-revenue startups.
Read more: 36kr.com
