Chinese Robotic Startup Raises $820m for Its Development

The Shenzhen-based home robotics company, UBTech has raised $820m in a funding round led by Tencent for its development in Artificial intelligence. According to the company, the funding will be utilized in R&D, hires and expanding its global footprint.

“We are honored and gratified by this investment and the strategic initiatives. We will be able to launch as we innovate a new era of consumer robots,” says James Zhou, founder, and CEO of UBTech.

UBTech, which mostly creates humanoid robots, has displayed its new robot model called Walker for the public at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January this year. Walker is a bipedal robot and it can walk downstairs.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, the company is focusing more on making sophisticated devices affordable for home use. One of its consumer products includes a small domestic robot called Lynx which has a facial recognition and can be used for talking with Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa.

“As technology evolves to include more voice and touch capabilities, people need new devices that communicate and interact more naturally and intuitively at home, at school, and at work,” James Zhou added.

For the future, Tencent and UBTech have plans to collaborate for a product development. Also, UBTech is looking forward to adding investors like ICBC, Haier, Telstra and Sichuan Railway Investment Group to its belt.