Chinese Robotics Firm AI² Robotics Raises $735 Million at a $2.8 Billion Valuation

Key points

• AI² Robotics raised approximately $735 million in a new funding round in 2025, pushing its valuation past $2.8 billion USD.
• The company's robot uses wheels instead of legs, making it cheaper to build and easier to deploy in public spaces.
• Investors include Chinese government funds, industrial corporations such as Moutai Group, and financial firms including GSR Ventures.
• The robot runs on a proprietary AI model called Alpha Brain, which handles real-time decision-making and task planning.
• AI² Robotics is targeting logistics, manufacturing, and retail, not the household consumer market.

A Chinese robotics company has just landed one of the biggest funding rounds the sector has seen this year. AI² Robotics, based in Shenzhen, has raised around $735 million from a wide group of investors, according to reporting first published by The Robot Report. The fresh capital values the company at more than 50 billion RMB, which works out to roughly $2.8 billion US dollars.

The investor list reads like a cross-section of Chinese industry. Government-backed funds sit alongside pharmaceutical giant Sino Biopharmaceutical, the famous liquor brand Moutai Group, and financial firms CICC Capital and GSR Ventures. That kind of spread signals that Beijing and the private sector both see physical AI, meaning AI that controls machines in the real world, as strategically important.

So what does AI² Robotics actually build?

Its machine, called AlphaBot 2, looks like a humanoid from the waist up. It has a full torso, two arms, and five-fingered hands capable of delicate manipulation. Below the waist, though, there are no legs. The robot rolls on wheels.

That choice is deliberate. Walking robots that can climb stairs are complex, expensive, and face tighter safety regulations when operating near people. A wheeled base is simpler, more durable, and far cheaper to manufacture. AlphaBot 2 has more than 34 degrees of freedom, meaning its joints can move in over 34 independent directions, giving the upper body real dexterity despite the simpler base. A custom lifting mechanism lets the torso rise and lower, so the robot can reach a high shelf or work at table height.

Will this robot actually show up in places ordinary people visit?

Yes, sooner than most humanoid robots will. AI² Robotics is already pushing AlphaBot 2 into logistics warehouses, manufacturing lines, biotech labs, retail stores, and public service settings. The company is explicitly not promising a household robot any time soon, which is a refreshingly honest position in a sector full of ambitious consumer promises.

The brain behind the machine is a piece of software called Alpha Brain, a vision-language-action model. Think of it as the robot's nervous system: it reads the environment through cameras, understands what it sees, and works out how to complete multi-step tasks without a human directing every move.

This funding round lands as money pours into the broader humanoid robotics market globally. Rival firms are pursuing IPOs, acquisition deals, and their own fundraising rounds, and the competition to place useful robots in real workplaces is accelerating fast.

If you work in a warehouse, a pharmacy, or a large retail chain, robots like AlphaBot 2 are worth knowing about. Watch for pilot programmes announced by logistics and manufacturing partners over the next 12 to 18 months.