Yueqian raises angel round to build a camera-wielding robot for creators
What's the deal? Yueqian InnovationDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Chinese startup founded in 2023, has closed an angel round from Mingshi Venture Capital, Nanshan Strategic EmergingDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → Industry Investment, and Chuxin CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The company earlier took seed funding from Hong Kong investor Li ZexiangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
What's the endgame? Yueqian's first product, a force-balanced camera arm called Cilin X, aims to let solo creators and small teams plan, execute, and reproduce complex camera moves. Founder and chief executive officer Zeng Cheng frames it as a "photography robot," not just a moving arm — a vision system tracks the subject, an algorithm plans the path, and the arm shoots.
Why now? Professional camera robots exist but are costly and bulky. The UK-made MRMC BoltDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → weighs about 600kg with its base; even slimmed-down models still weigh 25kg to 33.5kg. "A day's rental runs tens of thousands of yuan, plus two engineers on site to program it," Zeng told 36Kr (translated from Chinese).
Meanwhile, demand for video is broadening. WistiaDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → found over 40% of surveyed companies make at least one video a week, and 71% produce in-house, up from 63% a year earlier. The IABDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → expects US brand spending on creators to hit $37 billion in 2025, up 26% year on year.
The product: Yueqian first tried shrinking a standard six-axis industrial arm, building 70kg and 40kg prototypes before changing course. Because a mounted camera carries a fixed load, the team used mechanical structure to pre-balance the arm, letting motors drive motion rather than hold weight. That cuts joint torque from about 100N·m to under 10N·m and reduces vibration. Cilin X uses a "3+3" layout — three axes for camera position, three for lens orientation — to avoid singularity points.
What could go wrong? The target market — professional content creators — is narrow, and larger players such as DJI and Insta360 could move in. Zeng argues incumbents would validate the opportunity: "A giant entering further proves this can be made big." His answer is to start with professionals, then extend to consumers while accumulating creative data.
The signal: Yueqian is betting on a gap between film-grade rigs and lightweight accessories such as sliders and gimbals, pricing deployment closer to personal gear. Its longer-term plan is to build a visual-expression model from users' framing and camera choices — turning a hardware tool into software that learns how creators shoot.
Read more: 36kr.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
