"Octopus Power" Closes Nearly $50 Million Series A, Co-Led by Linear Capital and Others | Linear Portfolio

Today, physical AI company SynapX announced the completion of its nearly $50 million Series A round, co-led by Horizon Robotics, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Xiaomi Strategic Investment, Shunwei Capital, and Linear Capital.

Founded in January 2026, SynapX is a frontier technology company on a mission to build physical AGI, dedicated to creating sustainable, self-evolving embodied intelligence productivity. Its founder, Dalong Du, holds an engineering doctorate from Tsinghua University's Innovation Leadership Program and was the sixth founding employee at Horizon Robotics — a Linear Capital angel portfolio company. At the end of 2025, Du's co-founded company PhiGent Robotics was successfully acquired in the largest intelligent driving M&A deal in A-share history.

As an investor in SynapX's Series A round, Linear Capital is bullish on Dalong Du and his team, and looks forward to seeing them break new ground on the challenging path of using AI to transform the physical world.

On March 20, physical AI company SynapX announced the completion of its nearly $50 million Series A round. The investors in this round are: Horizon Robotics, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Xiaomi Strategic Investment, Shunwei Capital, and Linear Capital.

SynapX was founded in January 2026 and is a frontier technology company on a mission to build physical AGI, dedicated to creating sustainable, self-evolving embodied intelligence productivity. From its founding to the closing of its first funding round took less than two months. The ability to simultaneously gain recognition from top industrial capital and leading investment institutions in such a short time reflects the market's strong endorsement of SynapX's founding team, technical approach, and long-term value.

This round of funding will primarily be used for core technology and product R&D, data system construction, and talent acquisition.

Meanwhile, the company's next funding round is also advancing in parallel, and continues to attract interest and support from international industrial capital, family offices, and top-tier dollar funds.

The SynapX team believes that true embodied intelligence is not just about understanding the world, but about completing operational tasks in real physical environments and forming closed execution loops. Achieving this goal depends not only on model scale, but even more on the unified design of model architecture, world modeling, and data systems.

Based on this understanding, SynapX has proposed the SYNTH architecture, building a core technical system oriented toward physical AGI.

SYNTH is not a single-point technology, but a system architecture that co-evolves around operational intelligence, physical world modeling, and data systems, including:

SYNAction | Deep Thought · Execution

Model Architecture for Operational Intelligence

SynapX pioneered REMA (Rhythmic End-to-End Manipulation Architecture), a frequency-divided, multi-scale end-to-end manipulation architecture. Within a unified model, it completes the closed loop from cognition to execution through a three-layer end-to-end architecture:

• System 2 (low frequency): Responsible for task understanding, cognitive reasoning, and high-level planning
• System 1 (medium frequency): Responsible for action policy generation, bridging cognition and execution
• System 0 (high frequency): Responsible for low-level control and fine-grained interactive execution

This architecture enables robots to more efficiently complete complex manipulation tasks and achieve full execution loops in real-world environments.

SYNWorld | Deep Thought · World

"Omniscient" Foundation Model for Physical World Understanding

SynapX builds VFT-WFM (Vision–Force–Tactile World Foundation Model), unifying vision, force, and touch within a physical interaction modeling framework:

• Vision: Visual information and spatial representation
• Force: Applied forces and manipulation dynamics
• Touch: Contact states and detailed interactions

Thus, the robot not only knows "what it sees," but also knows "how to complete the operation, how to make contact, and how to apply force."

SYNData | Deep Thought · Data

Full-Modality Data System Driving Continuous Model Evolution

SynapX builds OPDS (Omni-modal Physical Data System). Through unique hardware design and innovative AI algorithms, it achieves high-precision acquisition and scalable generation of multi-modal physical signals including vision, force, and touch — providing scaled, high-quality data for the continuous evolution of foundation models.

SynapX's founding team combines top-tier AI technical insight, global capital perspective, and long-term industrial judgment.

This rare combination of capabilities allows us to think about physical AI more holistically: not only focusing on how the technology works, but also on how it evolves, how it lands in the real world, and how it becomes truly future-oriented productivity.

The team brings together researchers, engineers, and industry leaders from global top tech giants — including Horizon Robotics, Baidu, Microsoft, Alibaba, ByteDance, NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto. We possess world-class AI R&D capabilities and are one of the few AI-native teams in the current embodied intelligence industry that has successfully gone through the full-stack, hardware-software mass production baptism. From lab research to real-world deployment, we have personally experienced and deeply participated in every hurdle that must be crossed to truly put robots to work in practice.

Kai Yu, Founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics, said:

"Dalong is one of the technical entrepreneurs I have known, trusted, and respected the most over all these years, and also a core comrade-in-arms who has fought alongside me for the long term. From Baidu to Horizon Robotics, we have worked together all the way. I have witnessed his insight and judgment on key AI directions, and also his resilience and composure during his entrepreneurial journey at PhiGent.

In my view, what is most rare about Dalong is his long-term, stable passion for AI, and the profound understanding that has accumulated from it; even rarer is that he is one of the very few people who can truly connect forward-looking research, system architecture, and engineering implementation.

Today, leading SynapX into physical AI, he has chosen a hard but correct path. I have full confidence in him and the team. SynapX's thinking on embodied intelligence foundation models and system architecture demonstrates high technical positioning and endgame-oriented judgment, and is also highly consistent with the technical faith we have long upheld.

I believe SynapX will become an important force in the physical AI era. I and Horizon Robotics will continue to support Dalong and SynapX, jointly accelerating the arrival of the general embodied intelligence era."

Harry Wang, Founder and CEO of Linear Capital, said:

As a participant in SynapX's Series A round, we are very bullish on Dalong Du and his team. On the challenging path of using AI to transform the physical world, they have demonstrated rare reliability and vision. The technical sophistication of the SYNTH architecture, combined with Dalong's emotionally steady leadership, convinces us that this team can persevere through the long march toward AGI and ultimately become a true "great dragon"!

About SynapX

SynapX was founded in January 2026 and is a frontier technology company on a mission to build physical AGI, dedicated to creating sustainable, self-evolving embodied intelligence productivity and a more prosperous and abundant future. With the SYNTH architecture as its technical foundation, the company is committed to pushing robots toward true operational intelligence and accelerating the arrival of the physical AGI era.

With top-tier AI models and exceptional system capabilities, we continuously construct and drive the task-data closed loop — putting robots to work in real applications, using scaled deployment as the engine to activate data flywheel iteration, and accelerating toward the "ChatGPT moment" in general embodied intelligence.

Careers: dream@synapa.ai

Investment: investor@synapa.ai

Business: business@synapa.ai

Media: media@synapa.ai