Deep sea robot maker raises $70M Series A, topping 95% of China's peers
What's the deal? Deep Sea Homo Sapiens (Guangzhou) TechnologyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised more than 500 million CNY ($70 million) in a Series A round, the company announced in August 2026. The round drew a large syndicate, including Guanghe Venture Capital, Dachen Chuangtou, GGV CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Yida CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, China Insurance Investment, and CETC Investment.
Who else joined? Cathay CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → invested through an energy technology fund anchored by TotalEnergiesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Existing backers — Zhengxuan InvestmentDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Yunze CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Yunshi CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Gaojie CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Xingzhi CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — followed on in large proportions.
What does it do? Founded three years ago in the Greater Bay Area by industry veteran Ma Yiming, the company builds work-class remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for deep-sea industrial work. Its products span depths from 1,000m to 6,000m and target offshore oil and gas, subsea communications, offshore wind, and future deep-sea mining.
By the numbers: As of July, the company had signed several hundred million CNY in new equipment sales contracts, with a similar volume of orders locked for the following two months and a potential 1 billion CNY pipeline in advanced talks. In summer 2025, it delivered a "Phoenix 600" robot worth nearly $10 million to Emirates Telecommunications GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which reordered in October.
Why now? Backers frame the round as a bet on embodied AI entering real industrial settings. "We believe this is not just a growth opportunity for a deep-sea robotics company," said Cathay Capital partner Zhang Li, but "an important direction for artificial intelligence entering the real industrial world."
What's the endgame? The company aims to break European and American dominance of high-end deep-sea robotics with fully self-developed technology. It has built over 300 in-house standards manuals benchmarked against top offshore-engineering norms, and develops its pressure structures, hydraulic manipulators, navigation, and control systems in-house rather than assembling bought-in parts.
The signal: At $70 million, this ranks among the largest robotics Series A rounds in China, above roughly 95% of the 392 comparable deals on record. The presence of four leading market VCs alongside state-backed investors marks growing conviction that deep-sea work is the next commercial frontier for industrial robotics.
Read more: 36kr.com
Image credit: Deep Sea Homo Sapiens (Guangzhou) Technology
