General Electric-footed robotics company LimX Dynamics completes nearly RMB 200 million angel and Pre-A funding rounds | Oasis Capital leads

General-purpose legged robot company LimX Dynamics has completed its angel and Pre-A funding rounds, raising nearly RMB 200 million in total. Oasis Capital led the Pre-A round, with Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group also participating. The proceeds will support LimX Dynamics from product commercialization to frontier technology pre-research, covering the productization of its wheeled-quadruped robots, humanoid bipedal robot R&D, and breakthroughs in AI and embodied intelligence core technologies. The company's angel round saw joint investments from several top-tier VC firms, including FreeS Fund, ZhiShu Capital, Future Capital, and Kinzon Capital.

Dr. Wei Zhang, founder of LimX Dynamics, said: "The integration of perception and motion control will be the key technology for next-generation legged robots to achieve breakthroughs, and it is also at the core of LimX Dynamics' Motion Intelligence. LimX Dynamics is one of the few teams globally focused on Motion Intelligence R&D for legged robots, with world-class research achievements, leading technical capabilities, and top-tier talent. Leveraging our technological edge, we are focused on commercializing our wheeled-quadruped robot while systematically tackling key challenges in humanoid bipeds and the integration of AI with general-purpose robots — staying 'grounded yet ambitious' to build solid products and maintain our technical leadership. Building general-purpose robots is a difficult but great endeavor, and we are fortunate to have the strong support of like-minded investors such as Oasis Capital, who firmly believe in the long-term value of robotics and AI and are committed to helping our team go further and more steadily in this long race of technological innovation."

An investment principal at Oasis Capital said: "The LimX Dynamics team's academic background and innovative capabilities have kept them at the forefront of legged robot-AI integration for the long term. Going forward, the critical technology for legged robots lies in the deep integration of perception and motion control. LimX Dynamics has been tackling the technical bottlenecks that have long plagued legged robots, achieving breakthroughs particularly in all-terrain mobility and opening new pathways for practical applications of general-purpose robots. We believe the LimX Dynamics team will bring more innovation and development to the industry and contribute to the era of general-purpose robots, bringing capital and industrial support to the advancement of wheeled-quadruped, humanoid bipedal, and AI technologies."

LimX Dynamics' humanoid bipedal robots share underlying core technologies with its quadruped robots, employing a hybrid approach combining model-based and learning-based methods, with a focus on breakthroughs in terrain perception and complex terrain adaptation for humanoid bipeds. LimX Dynamics aims to first build an all-terrain mobility platform for legged robots, becoming "the DJI of ground robotics" — enabling robots to move stably from point A to point B across all terrains. With over a decade of deep expertise in robotics, the core team possesses world-leading perception-based motion control algorithms, legged robot reinforcement learning algorithms, and fully self-developed high-performance legged joints. Its technology strategy is clear: continuously leverage the technical advantage of software-defined hardware to advance the intelligence of legged robot locomotion, building powerful and reliable motion control capabilities for future general-purpose AI robots. Since its launch in September, LimX Dynamics' first wheeled-quadruped product, the W1, has garnered significant attention and recognition from academic and industry circles at home and abroad. In its next phase, the company will work with strategic customers and partners to tackle real-world deployment, continuously iterating hardware and software capabilities around real-time terrain perception, perception-motion control integration, and high-performance joints to break through the technical bottlenecks currently limiting commercial adoption of legged robots.

The product is planned for B2B scenarios including industrial inspection, logistics and delivery, special operations, and research and education, with pre-orders expected to open in Q4 2023. "In our conversations with many customers, we've found that current quadruped robots cannot meet client demands for terrain adaptability and efficiency in real-world applications. We are selecting distinctive, representative industry customers to jointly build benchmark deployment cases," said Zhang. For legged robots to actually deploy in real scenarios, they need not only reliable, stable hardware but also terrain-based perception capabilities that allow the hardware to function in actual environments like factories. "Weak perception" is currently a bottleneck for most legged robots.

Since large models became a hot topic, humanoid robots have been seen as the most promising scenario for hosting large models. Large language models possess conversational abilities that can give humanoid robots a general-knowledge "brain," enabling smooth interaction with the outside world while adding "decision-making" capabilities such as task understanding, decomposition, and logical reasoning. Many players are now entering embodied intelligence — some from the large model angle to empower the robot brain, others from the motion control angle. LimX Dynamics aims to develop humanoid robots with perception-based motion control and perception-based manipulation capabilities.

Wei Zhang has researched humanoid robots for many years. As early as 2021, he and his team at Ohio State University in the United States were among the first to achieve stable indoor and outdoor walking for humanoid bipedal robots using reinforcement learning methods. After founding LimX Dynamics, the team went further, advancing bipedal robot R&D through a hybrid approach combining model-driven and AI methods — one of the few teams in the industry to tightly integrate both. While Zhang has hands-on R&D experience with humanoid robots, LimX Dynamics' strategy for humanoid robots is to maintain strong pre-research capabilities and a leading position in the field without rushing to launch products.

"The technology for humanoid robot products is not yet mature, and many key technologies still require pre-research. It's not that hard to launch a humanoid bipedal robot that can take a few steps on flat ground — our humanoid bipedal robot needs to have all-terrain mobility capabilities," Zhang said. LimX Dynamics' approach to humanoid robots is to first develop stable, reliable humanoid robots capable of moving across complex terrain, along with basic manipulation capabilities, completing the technical breakthroughs and software framework construction for humanoid robots before tackling the functional requirements needed for real-world deployment. LimX Dynamics' humanoid bipedal robot is expected to be unveiled in 2023.

Cost and application scenarios are the core challenges humanoid robots will face next. Humanoid robots are still in the very early stages of the race, and the industry is far from establishing a viable commercial闭环. In Zhang's view, humanoid robots can be used in enclosed scenarios, but making the economics work is still a long way off — this depends not on any single company but on broader technological and academic progress.

Dr. Wei Zhang, founder of LimX Dynamics, is a tenured professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. Before founding LimX Dynamics, he was a tenured professor at Ohio State University in the United States, with long-term research in control theory and applications, robotics, machine learning, and other fields. LimX Dynamics currently has over 40 employees.

Source: 36Kr, author Yang Xiao

Vitality

What do you think vitality is?

It's the process of continuously absorbing nourishment with an open mind, breaking through oneself and pushing boundaries — whether in frontier technology research, innovative product development, or the day-to-day grind of operational execution, all require strong vitality to sustain. It's a firm belief that helps us maintain an optimistic heart when facing difficulties, and go all out toward our goals.

—Dr. Wei Zhang, Founder of LimX Dynamics

Oasis Capital is a new-generation venture capital firm in China, dedicated to discovering the most vital entrepreneurs of the next decade and growing alongside them to create long-term value. "Vitality" is both the direction of structural transformation in the era and the resilience and evolutionary force of entrepreneurs. Oasis Capital focuses on early and growth-stage investments, with individual ticket sizes ranging from $3 million to $30 million USD, concentrating on healthcare, biotechnology, enterprise services, and other technology-enabled service sectors, supporting China's new service upgrade driven by technology.