StarMap secures an additional 2 billion yuan in Series B+ funding, with funding events in the embodied intelligence sector surging by 63% in 2026.

Jing Daily reporter｜Li Lei｜Jing Daily editor｜Peng Shuiping

Jing Daily (The Daily Economic News) reporters learned that since the beginning of 2026, fundraising interest in China’s embodied intelligence track has continued to rise. In just the first three months, the track’s financing scale has already neared 30 billion yuan, and the trend of capital concentrating on leading companies has become even more evident.

Against this backdrop, Star Sea Map, a leading company in China’s embodied intelligence space, has recently received additional capital injection. After completing a 1 billion yuan Series B financing in February this year, the company also announced it has secured 2 billion yuan in a Series B+ round financing. Its valuation has surpassed 20 billion yuan, making it the embodied intelligence company with the highest valuation in China at present.

Jing Daily reporters learned from industry insiders that this round of financing brings together multiple forces, including industrial capital, long-term funds at the first and second tiers, government-backed funds, and leading first-tier PE institutions. The funding will comprehensively step up investment in foundational model research and a global ecosystem rollout.

In the view of industry participants, this financing not only refreshes the valuation ceiling of China’s embodied intelligence industry, but also serves as a clear snapshot of how track capital has been accelerating toward industry leaders since the start of the year. It reflects the capital market’s re-evaluation of the value of embodied intelligence—from technical exploration to a stage of large-scale, practical deployment.

Some experts interviewed also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry is still in the early R&D stage and has not yet reached a large-scale deployment stage. From 2026 to 2027, industrial scenarios are the most promising environments to support commercially scaled deployment of embodied robots to a certain extent, and the most important scenarios for them to demonstrate their intelligent capabilities.

Two rounds of financing announced back-to-back within two months for Star Sea Map

Another leading embodied intelligence company has announced a financing deal.

Today, Star Sea Map disclosed information about its Series B+ financing round, showing that the round secured 2 billion yuan. This is the company’s second major round of large-scale financing completed in more than a month. The valuation for this round has also surpassed 20 billion yuan, making it the company with the highest valuation in China’s embodied intelligence industry. Compared with the financing valuation before the Spring Festival, Star Sea Map achieved nearly a doubling of its valuation within just one month, becoming the company with the fastest valuation growth rate in the embodied intelligence track after the Spring Festival of 2026.

Before this, one of the hottest embodied intelligence companies in the market—Ubtech Technology—had a post-investment valuation of 12.7 billion yuan in its last round of financing before listing. In March of this year, Ubtech Technology officially submitted its STAR Market IPO application to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. After the IPO, the company’s valuation is expected to reach 42 billion yuan.‌

In terms of the investment lineup, industrial giants, long-term funds from the first and second tiers, government-backed funds, and first-tier PE institutions have all stepped in. Among them, industrial capital including Huaden Technology, Lens Technology, and Sizing Investment has entered the picture. As an important partner of Star Sea Map, Lens Technology will engage in in-depth coordination with the company in the hardware supply chain and the field of large-scale mass production, accelerating product penetration across all scenarios.

On the long-term, patient capital side, long-term funds such as Xiuanyuan Capital, Hongzhang Investment, and Yuhai Capital have joined strongly. On the government-backed funding side, capital support has come from Financial Street Capital, Jinpu Investment, Beijing Kechuang, and Yuanfen Equity. Additionally, funds under CICC Capital, Putuo Capital, Hongtai Fund, and GF Qianhe—along with other first-tier PE institutions—also placed bets this time. They not only provide ample funding assurances, but also help push the commercialization and deployment of the investees.

Regarding the use of the financing funds in this round, Star Sea Map stated clearly that it will comprehensively step up foundational model R&D and its global ecosystem plan. It will focus on driving comprehensive leadership in the vision-language-action (VLA) model and world model implementation along a real-data route under the company’s actual data approach. At the same time, it will accelerate the company’s leapfrog evolution from “developer’s first choice” to a “benchmark for productive forces,” advancing large-scale commercialization deployment of embodied intelligence technology in the physical world.

Star Sea Map also revealed that in 2025, in the global market for wheeled dual-arm robots, its market share ranked first. It serves more than 150 embodied intelligence developer partners, with a coverage rate exceeding 90% at the top end. On the productivity-scenarios side, the company has already focused on five core vertical scenarios—such as moving and transportation, picking and placing—completing order runs at the thousand-unit scale, and has reached deep cooperation with industry-leading companies in fields including industrial handling and logistics sorting. In 2026, the company will officially begin large-scale volume ramp-up at the ten-thousand-unit level.

**Three-layer logic supports valuation growth, ****2026 embodied intelligence faces **a “small business test” for commercialization

As one of the investors in this round, a Hongtai Fund investor said in an interview with Jing Daily reporters that the embodied intelligence and humanoid robot track will be the biggest hardware platform opportunity after smartphones. From a long-cycle perspective, the embodied intelligence track is still in its early stage. We’re increasingly seeing the importance of foundational model innovation for companies. Meanwhile, after three years of technological development, 2026 will inevitably bring a round of a “small business test” for commercialization for startups in embodied intelligence.

The Hongtai Fund investor said, “Star Sea Map is one of the few teams we’ve seen in this track that genuinely possesses an end-to-end full-stack closed-loop capability of ‘body + model + data.’ Over the past two years, the team centered around Gao Jiyang has demonstrated strong execution ability and strategic selection capability. Star Sea Map was the first to run the positive flywheel of ‘hardware shipments → scenario data backflow → continuous model iteration,’ which is a core path for embodied intelligence to move from the lab to industrialization.”

When asked about the reasons for Star Sea Map’s sustained valuation increase, the company’s负责人, in interviews with media including Jing Daily, said it mainly comes from three underlying logics.

First, R&D investment has shifted from “efficiency” to “effect.” In the past half year, the company’s R&D expenses reached several times the amount since the company was founded. With data, hardware, and algorithms all ready, the company actively promotes industry-scale development. The rapid progress in performance and technology has also brought about a reversal in market expectations. Second, systematic R&D capabilities have become prominent. Star Sea Map’s world model Fast-WAM has been recognized by key figures in Silicon Valley, proving the company’s ability to achieve continuous technological breakthroughs. Third, the pricing reconstruction of Hong Kong stock market large model targets has reshaped the valuation system in the primary market. The capital market is evaluating the value of embodied large model companies from a more medium-to-long-term perspective. As Star Sea Map is a genuine embodied large model target, its scarcity has been recognized by capital.

The负责人 also pointed out that the embodied intelligence industry chain is long and involves many elements, requiring companies to become “six-sided fighters.” Traditional large enterprises only have advantages in certain individual links, making it difficult to achieve a dimensionality-reduction knockout through capital advantages. Therefore, this track is especially suitable for the development of startups. Star Sea Map predicts that among China’s top ten embodied intelligence leading enterprises in the future, at least half will grow from startups existing today. Based on this judgment, the company will also take the lead this year in setting up an industry fund. On the foundation of having invested in nearly 10 industry early-stage companies, it will focus on downstream scenario application companies and frontier technology companies, building an open and win-win industrial ecosystem.

**Capital-intensive layout, **data is the key to breaking through the industry

Star Sea Map’s successive large-scale financing rounds are not an isolated case, but rather a snapshot of the capital boom in the embodied intelligence track in 2026. As valuations of leading companies continue to rise, financing activity across the industry has also seen a significant increase.

Jing Daily reporters, based on statistics from iZhong Jiachuan CVSource, found that as of April 1, the number of financing events in the robotics track this year has already exceeded 160. Compared with the same period last year, this is a surge of 63%. In terms of investment amounts, financing in the robotics track is often relatively large—hundreds of millions to even several hundred million or tens of billions of yuan are not uncommon—and compared with the same period last year, there has been a clear increase as well.

Li Jiaxin, an intermediate researcher at the Greater Bay Area Institute of Applied Artificial Intelligence Research, told reporters that the most core reason embodied intelligence has continued to receive capital infusions this year is that the certainty of industrial value has increased significantly, gradually moving from “lab demonstrations” to “real work in factories.” However, the embodied intelligence industry is still in the early stage of R&D and has not yet reached a large-scale deployment stage. Industry focus is still on improving intelligence, and the key bottleneck in improving intelligence is data. Therefore, it can be seen that the industry continues to explore routes such as remote control, simulation, and UMI data.

Another intermediate researcher, Zhang Zhen, added that the core factor constraining industry development today is insufficient technical capability and immature hardware at the engineering level. In terms of technical capability, current embodied intelligence has weak generalization ability and insufficient long-horizon task memory and planning. Restrictions at the capability level largely stem from a lack of data. In addition, hardware costs and reliability are also key bottlenecks at the engineering level. “We believe that from 2026 to 2027, industrial scenarios are the most important environments that are most likely to carry commercially deployed embodied robots at a certain scale and demonstrate their intelligence.”

Duang Lei, research director of the Greater Bay Area Institute of Applied Artificial Intelligence Research, pointed out that in the embodied intelligence field, the most certain competitive advantage—at least based on the current situation—may still be who can solve the data problem first: “Who can systematically connect the full closed loop of data collection, labeling, simulation, and backflow, train stable and usable embodied ‘intelligence,’ and then build it into hardware and product forms without obvious shortcomings, they have a better chance to be the first to break out.”

He predicted that future leading companies may be highly integrated embodied intelligence companies where the company controls everything end-to-end—from algorithms, data, and computing power to complete-machine hardware and operational systems—similar to an “integrated robot original equipment manufacturer” with both software and hardware. Another possibility is the emergence of more platform-based or modular roles, focusing on a general embodied intelligence operating system, and the perception—decision—control stack, partnering with many industry players to enable deployment.

Cover image source: Jing Daily media resource database