Keyi Tech announced the completion of a Series B financing round of tens of millions of US dollars, with previous lead investor Source Code Capital continuing to increase its stake.

源码资本·July 20, 2021·0·5

Building a Versatile Robot Platform

Consumer robotics platform Keyi Tech recently raised tens of millions of dollars in a Series B round led by Xiaomi and Shunwei Capital, with existing investor Source Code Capital — which led the previous round — also participating. YiBai Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. Founder and CEO Jianbo Yang said the funds will go toward building out the company's robotics community platform, product R&D and iteration, and recruiting top-tier engineers and designers to help deliver better products to robot enthusiasts worldwide.

Founded in 2014, Keyi Tech is a consumer robotics company and the world's first to build a modular robotics platform — not just a new product, but an entirely new category. Its flagship product, ClicBot, has won over users in more than 82 countries, ranking among the top five consumer robots globally in 2020. Forbes named it the most recommended programming robot of 2020, making Keyi Tech the only Chinese robotics company on the list. The team comprises top robotics engineers, algorithm specialists, and designers from overseas research institutes and universities. As Jianbo Yang puts it, they're "a group of robot obsessives" with an extreme dedication to product excellence, pushing boundaries to bring industrial-grade consumer robots into every home through the fusion of art and technology.

ClicBot has its own personality. Through over 200 cinematic, animation-style interactions, it brings the fantasy robots of cartoons into real life. It can be assembled and combined in endless configurations. No coding required — users simply move and design ClicBot freely, and it memorizes the sequence of motions to generate a control panel. In just minutes, anyone can create their own robot like they're directing a film. Of course, as users advance, higher-level programming unlocks even more possibilities.

"The ClicBot experience goes far beyond the tens of thousands of possible robot combinations and play patterns," said Jianbo Yang, founder and CEO of Keyi Tech. "It's the entire ClicBot community — creators, robot enthusiasts, kids and grown-ups from around the world — that makes it what it is. Our users form a developer community. On this platform, you can see endless creativity generated by the community every day, share your own creations, and collaborate with others to turn wild ideas into reality. If you can imagine it, you can build it with ClicBot. You can simply snap together an adorable robot pet that senses people and surroundings, follows you around, and plays interactive games. You can assemble various camera rigs for motion time-lapse photography and shoot slick vlogs with robot assistance. You can even build wall-climbing robots. All of this happens on one platform."

Keyi Tech's user research shows that Gen Z has an exceptionally strong drive to create. Young people aren't satisfied with passive entertainment or fixed-pattern toys — they want to create, collaborate, and communicate. They have a natural inclination to make new things, constantly teaming up with friends to build something together.

The ClicBot ecosystem comprises content consumers, content creators, and developers. These three groups form the user community, which grows in tandem with the platform itself. The robotics ecosystem fully serves children aged 5–16 seeking robot experiences and companionship, creative adults building advanced robots from modules, and engineer-developers who become product evangelists. "Once we've built out this platform and community, we can further segment and focus on very specific categories and robotics application scenarios," Yang said.

On Xiaomi's investment and partnership, Yang said Keyi Tech will work closely with the company, combining Keyi Tech's strengths in robotics technology and consumer robot product design with Xiaomi's advantages in AI technology and supply chain channels to jointly develop robotics products. Through this collaboration, millions of people will be able to experience the wonder of the metaverse.