BlueRun Ventures Early-Stage Portfolio Company Pongbot Raises Nearly RMB 200 Million in Series A Funding, Redefining Sports Through AI | BlueRun Family

On April 13, 2026, Pongbot held its "New Journey Crowned, Momentum Unleashed" launch event in Shanghai. Table tennis Grand Slam champion Zhang Jike appeared as global brand ambassador, and the limited-edition black-gold intelligent table tennis serving robot was officially unveiled. This launch marked more than a product iteration — it was a milestone in Pongbot's accelerated push to build technical moats, expand its product categories, and execute global expansion, all backed by a new round of top-tier capital.

In less than six months, Pongbot completed three consecutive rounds of Series A financing totaling nearly RMB 200 million, with BlueRun Ventures, Shenqi Capital, Future Capital, Jinqiu Fund, and China Growth Capital all doubling down. The proceeds will fund product and technology iteration while accelerating global brand and market expansion.

BlueRun Ventures led Pongbot's A+ round and has continued to invest in subsequent rounds. We congratulate Pongbot on completing this new financing round and taking a critical step forward in the "multimodal AI + sports" track! Behind this sustained investor confidence, we see not just market heat, but Pongbot's long-accumulated underlying technical strength, product-definition capability, mass-production capacity, and execution in global market deployment. From table tennis to tennis, from single devices to an intelligent coaching product matrix, Pongbot continues to drive sports technology innovation through its integrated "hand-eye-brain" underlying architecture, bringing professional training into ordinary homes. Nearly 300,000 users, 2 billion serves, and millions of training data points are only the starting point of its product and data flywheels. We look forward to Pongbot using this financing as a new springboard to accelerate global expansion, continue leading the multi-billion-dollar "multimodal AI + sports" blue ocean, and create smarter, more efficient, and more enjoyable sports experiences for more users.

Founded in 2019, Pongbot was established by Haibo Zhang, who brings deep industry expertise in sports and over a decade of experience in sports training robot R&D. He previously led the development of a national-team-grade table tennis sparring robot, solving core technical challenges in high-speed ball perception, trajectory prediction, and ball physics simulation. This professional-grade product development experience allowed the team to enter the consumer market from a position of technical strength, with precise cross-category product definition capabilities. The company also fields a full-stack team with billion-level execution capability in branding, overseas expansion, and commercialization, with core members who are seasoned industry veterans with deep experience in brand operations and global channel deployment.

Starting from table tennis, Pongbot has built a replicable integrated "hand-eye-brain" underlying technical architecture, combining high-speed visual capture, lightweight and efficient intelligent algorithms, and high-performance hardware drive to bring AI vision and robot control into sports. Leveraging this core technical capability, it pioneered the AI tennis serving robot category. Its PACE series intelligent tennis serving robot launched on Kickstarter in October 2024 and raised over $2.7 million. Pongbot has now achieved full coverage from professional-grade to consumer-grade products, providing unprecedented intelligent training experiences for table tennis, tennis, and other ball-sport enthusiasts, with industry-leading commercial performance and market share.

In fact, Pongbot's ambitions extend far beyond the intelligent serving robot market. The company is targeting the hundred-billion-dollar "AI + sports" blue ocean. Net sports, as the core category of racket sports, rest on a solid foundation of over 1 billion global users. The development of multimodal large models and the spillover of cutting-edge industrial technologies have brought "AI + sports" to a technological inflection point, where roles previously filled by coaches, sparring partners, referees, opponents, and commentators can all be reshaped by AI — opening up a high-value track worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Pongbot has keenly identified training as the optimal entry point with the highest commercial value and deepest technical capability accumulation. In tennis, for example, the ratio of active players to coaches in the United States is 800:1, with severe shortages of coaches and sparring partners, while professional coach training cycles are long and barriers to entry are high — creating massive real demand for AI coaches. At the same time, entering through the training segment enables the company to rapidly accumulate full-stack technology, build complete training datasets, establish brand recognition, and open global channels, then expand from AI coach to full-role coverage.

Pongbot revealed that it currently has over 300,000 users, more than 1 million user-generated training drills, and over 2 billion cumulative serves. With significant first-mover advantages and massive data accumulation, the company has built an AI core capability moat that is difficult to replicate. Recently, Pongbot's new intelligent tennis serving robot has begun pre-launch warm-up. This generation will simultaneously support training for tennis, pickleball, padel, and other popular racket sports, and will feature a self-developed on-device AI coach function, bringing accessible training guidance to a broader range of home users.

From table tennis to tennis, horizontally expanding across multiple sports, vertically accumulating data, and closing the loop on AI capabilities, Pongbot will continue to deepen its focus on "AI + sports" and build a sports technology ecosystem. Whether for professional athletes' competitive training or ordinary families' daily exercise, Pongbot is committed to empowering more sports scenarios with technology, improving the ball-sport skills of the general population, and contributing to the advancement of overall public fitness and health.

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