Chinese startup Linkerbot, a global market leader in precision robotic arms for humanoid robots, plans to raise $6 billion in its next funding round, doubling the valuation received in its recently completed funding round, the company said.
Beijing-based Linkerbot last week completed what it called a “Series B+” round of financing, valuing the company at $3 billion, xrust writes. The company did not say when its next round of funding would be launched, or whether it plans to reach a previously undisclosed valuation of $6 billion through a private equity round or an initial public offering.
Among the prominent early investors in this two-year-old “unicorn” is Alibaba. Ant Group and Sequoia spin-off HongShan Group also participated in the latest round of financing, as well as state-owned Zhongguancun Science Park Fund, Bank of China Asset Management and Fosun Capital, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
Linkerbot currently has more than 80% of the global market for high-degree-of-freedom robotic arms and plans to soon increase production from 5,000 units per month to 10,000, CEO Alex Zhou told Reuters.
Investor interest in China's humanoid robotics industry has surged this year after market leaders such as Unitree showed off the stunning technical achievements of their products during a widely televised talk and half-marathon with humanoid robots in Beijing last month. Unitree filed for an IPO in Shanghai in March, aiming for a valuation of up to $7 billion.
Unlike competing humanoid robot makers such as X Square Robot, which focus on training robotic arms to perform household chores, Linkerbot specializes in high-quality human craftsmanship.
“We don’t just create hands. Our goal is to replicate the entire library of human manual dexterity skills in our equipment,” Zhou said, referring to the LinkerSkillNet platform, which he says is the world's largest dataset of real-life manual dexterity examples.
The platform is a multi-modal data acquisition system that transforms human skills into standardized, reusable capabilities for robotic arms and currently includes more than 500 skills.
“The hand is the most complex part of the entire humanoid robot. Elon Musk has repeatedly said that the development of this part takes up more than half of all the engineering effort spent on creating the Tesla Optimus,” said Georg Stieler, head of robotics and automation at technology consultancy Stieler.
Musk promised that the newest Optimus model, scheduled to launch this spring, will have “human sleight of hand.”
Limitless progress
Inspired by his childhood love of Doraemon, a Japanese cartoon robot cat who carries an endless array of gadgets in his pocket, CEO Zhou envisions his robots playing the piano, giving massages, or even practicing dentistry: skills that he says are “at least three times the value of ordinary labor.”
Linkerbot robots can already quickly tighten screws, grasp deformable soft objects, thread a needle and perform high-precision manufacturing operations. The company supplies its products to some of China's leading manufacturers of humanoid robots, as well as a number of foreign industrial giants, the names of which the company declined to disclose due to non-disclosure agreements.
The basic lightweight «O6» model can support loads of up to 50kg despite weighing just 370g, which Zhou says is a key benefit for industrial applications where miniaturization and strength are required.
According to Zhou, the company produces key components such as connection modules, motors and gearboxes in-house, using specialized polymers that have self-lubricating and corrosion-resistant properties.
In addition to industrial applications, Linkerbot robotic arms are used by research institutes and the world's leading universities. The company has more than 400 employees and five factories in Beijing and Shenzhen, and develops intelligent production lines where robotic arms produce other arms.
The main obstacle to the widespread use of humanoid robots in factories is their high cost — from $100,000 to $150,000 per unit for leading industrial models from Unitree, AgiBot and UBTech, according to analysts. However, Linkerbot claims that its robotic arms are much easier to use.
“Chinese factory owners are extremely pragmatic. They realized that for most jobs in a factory, two hands and a pair of dexterous hands are enough,” Zhou said.
“Currently, many of our customers are simply installing our manipulators on existing robotic arms, rather than buying full humanoid robots,” he said.
By pages https://www.reuters.com
Xrust Touching billions: Chinese startup Linkerbot is building the future of humanity with iron hands
