Funding
CASBOT raises several hundred million yuan as it reports over RMB 400 million in shoemaking-robot orders
Short answer: Beijing-based CASBOT (中科慧灵), which builds humanoid and wheeled-arm robots, has completed an A++ funding round worth several hundred million yuan, according to China Securities Journal and Science and Technology Daily, both reporting on 26 October. Investors include Zhilai Investment, Yonghua Investment, Maotian Investment, Yuanhe Chenkun, Guoke Kezhi and Luning Investment. The exact amount was not disclosed.
The company told China Securities Journal that it holds more than RMB 400 million in 2026 orders for embodied-AI shoemaking robots, with production scheduled in the thousands of units. At a footwear factory in Putian, its lightweight CASBOT PA perception-to-action model, which it says can be trained on a single consumer GPU, runs robot arms that stamp an outsole every 7 seconds and press a pair of soles in 18 seconds, according to Science and Technology Daily. CASBOT's own estimate of a 50% to 70% annual return on investment for customers has not been independently verified.
Founded in 2023 and described by Science and Technology Daily as incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Automation, CASBOT sells the full-size CASBOT 02 humanoid, the wheeled-arm CASBOT W2 and the half-size CASBOT Mini. AI Market Watch reported that the company also has a mining joint venture with Shandong Zhaojin Group and Shandong Zhongkuang Group that is field-testing underground explosive-charging robots, and that its previous A round of nearly RMB 100 million in June 2025 was led by Lens Technology. Founder and chairman Zhang Zhengtao said the value of embodied intelligence "must ultimately be tested in the real world", per Science and Technology Daily.
The new money will go to mass-production delivery, model development and market expansion, the company said. For more on China's humanoid sector, see our China hub and funding and policy coverage.