Astribot Lands China's First Thousand-Unit Commercial Order, Accelerating AI Robot Deployment in Industry | Yunqi Capital

Commercial deployment of embodied intelligence is hitting the gas pedal.

Today (September 2), Astribot, an early portfolio company of Yunqi Capital, announced a thousand-unit strategic partnership with SEER for humanoid robots — the two companies will work together to deploy over 1,000 AI robots across industrial and logistics scenarios within the next two years.

This marks the first thousand-unit commercial contract for humanoid robots in China's industrial sector in 2025, accelerating the entry of AI robots into a new phase as "industrial intelligent agents." In this edition of Yunqi Capital, we break down the details.

01 A Powerful Alliance: From Single-Point Tech Validation to Multi-Scenario Applications

SEER is the world's largest intelligent robotics company built around controller systems, having ranked first globally in robot controller sales for two consecutive years in 2023–2024. This partnership combines Astribot's AI robot platform with SEER's control system technology to leap from isolated technical proof-of-concepts to multi-scenario, large-scale deployment.

Unlike traditional motor-driven joints, Astribot's distinctive cable-driven robots mimic the smooth, tendon-like force application of human muscles, giving AI robots inherent advantages in high-dynamic response, dexterous manipulation, and safe human-robot interaction for tasks like material delivery, assembly and transport, and collaborative operations. SEER's controllers ensure industrial-grade reliability and cost efficiency. Together, the two companies are pushing AI robots into a new phase as "industrial intelligent agents" and accelerating the evolution of embodied intelligence.

Under this partnership, AI robots will progressively take on production-line tasks including material delivery, tote handling, loading and unloading, and empty container recycling — automating the dull, repetitive, unsafe, and difficult aspects of manufacturing. This lightens the burden of repetitive labor on workers, allowing them to focus on skills and processes that resist automation, continuously improving both productivity and safety.

Astribot's mass-produced cable-driven AI robots enter the factory intelligent agent application phase

The large-scale validation deployment in this partnership also creates a real-world industrial testing ground for thousands of robots, enabling Astribot to achieve a virtuous platform iteration cycle of "hardware optimization — data accumulation — algorithm refinement — industrial deployment." This accelerates the full-chain application of AI robots in industrial scenarios, helping enterprise clients boost efficiency and cut costs while creating safer human-robot collaboration environments.

Beyond deployment in industrial and logistics settings, the two companies will also jointly develop industrial AI robot products, exploring frontier technical themes including robot control, cable-driven transmission, and AI-robot hardware-software synergy.

02 Astribot S1: Continuous Technical Evolution, Expanding Applications

Astribot focuses on developing a general-purpose AI robot platform and is the first company in the industry to achieve mass production of cable-driven AI robots. Its AI robot, the Astribot S1, employs unique cable-driven transmission technology that mimics the smooth, tendon-like force application of human muscles, making robot behavior and movements highly human-like. It possesses inherent operational advantages in high-dynamic response, dexterous manipulation, and safe human-robot interaction, enabling it to continuously explore work that humans excel at but traditional robots typically cannot perform — vastly expanding the imagination around applications.

The S1 has already landed benchmark clients in research, lifestyle, and commercial scenarios, establishing deep partnerships with JD.com, CCTV, Shenzhen Elderly Care Hospital, and the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Robotics (SIAT) in areas spanning products, solutions, and market development — accelerating industry adoption of robotics.

Astribot's S1 robot can complete multiple high-difficulty, long-sequence whole-body mobile tasks at 1x speed without teleoperation

Industry analysts believe that this order with SEER is not only among the earliest thousand-unit commercial partnerships for humanoid robots in China's industrial sector in 2025, but also provides an important practical case study for the deep integration of "robotics+" and intelligent manufacturing. The two companies plan to start from manufacturing and logistics, gradually expanding to more industrial scenarios and continuously advancing the commercialization of China's intelligent robotics industry.