Casbot Secures $14 Million to Advance Humanoid Robots for Industrial and Harsh Environments

Casbot Secures $14 Million to Advance Humanoid Robots for Industrial and Harsh Environments

Beijing, China – Casbot, a rapidly emerging Chinese developer of humanoid robots, has successfully closed an angel plus funding round, securing nearly RMB 100 million (approximately USD 14 million). The investment, backed by prominent names like Lens Technology, Tianjin Jiayi, and existing investors SDIC Unity Capital and Henan Asset Management, is earmarked to accelerate mass production, bolster research and development efforts, and expand market presence. This capital infusion signals growing confidence in the commercial viability of bipedal machines designed for challenging real-world applications.

Founded in August 2023 and based in Beijing's Zhongguancun tech hub, Casbot has quickly positioned itself at the forefront of general-purpose humanoid robotics and embodied intelligence. The company's core team brings a wealth of experience from significant national projects, including high-precision assembly systems for the C919 aircraft, quadruped robots, and micro-target assembly platforms. This background has endowed them with deep expertise in precision assembly, flexible manipulation, and visual servoing—critical skills for developing agile humanoid systems.

Casbot has unveiled two distinct bipedal humanoid robots: the Casbot 01 and the Casbot 02. While sharing foundational technologies, these models are designed for different operational environments. The Casbot 01, standing at 179 centimeters and weighing around 60 kilograms, boasts 52 degrees of freedom, 550 TOPS of onboard computing power, and a battery life exceeding four hours. It is primarily optimized for demanding outdoor environments and specialized tasks, including emergency response and heavy industrial settings, emphasizing robustness and functional resilience.

In contrast, the Casbot 02, launched in June, is a lighter, more compact model at 163 centimeters tall and 55 kilograms. Equipped with a 275 TOPS chip, RGB-D cameras, inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors, and a microphone array, the Casbot 02 focuses on advanced visual and auditory perception, featuring facial tracking and voiceprint recognition. Its design prioritizes reliable communication even in noisy settings, making it suitable for interactive roles in consumer and institutional spaces such such as science museums, exhibition halls, shopping centers, and automotive showrooms, where it can serve as a guide or interactive presenter.

Technologically, Casbot employs a layered end-to-end model architecture, enhanced by reinforcement learning. This hybrid approach enables sophisticated task decomposition while allowing the robots to dynamically adapt to unpredictable variables in real-time, such as environmental interference or human presence. The system continuously collects operational data, including force feedback and visual signal deviations, to refine its movement control strategies through a closed-loop training process. This iterative refinement allows for precise adjustments in tasks like screw fastening or object sorting.

"This combination of layered architecture with reinforcement learning offers the best of both worlds," explained Zhang Miao, co-founder and COO of Casbot, in an interview with 36Kr. "It allows for logical task planning while empowering the system to evolve through real-world feedback, creating a full-loop intelligence pipeline from perception to execution. This makes it ideal for industrial quality inspections or underground operations, where robustness is critical."

Casbot's commercial strategy is deliberately focused on the industrial and mining sectors. Zhang Miao highlighted that these areas present concentrated, well-defined use cases with clear customer needs, making them more conducive to the current stage of embodied robotics deployment compared to less structured domains like education or general commercial services. The company has already established significant expertise and customer relationships in emergency response, underground mining, and industrial manufacturing. Partnerships with major industrial players like Zhaojin Group, Sinomine Resource Group, and CITIC Heavy Industries are in place for co-developing specialized humanoid robots.

The decision to target these demand-driven sectors is strategic, aiming to achieve economies of scale, reduce unit costs, and gather valuable semi-structured operational data. This data, collected from real-world industrial deployments, is crucial for continuously improving Casbot's embodied intelligence models, fostering a virtuous cycle of deployment, feedback, and technical refinement.

In factories, where labor shortages are common and there's a growing need for flexible manufacturing, Casbot's humanoid robots offer a compelling solution. Industries like consumer electronics and apparel often face the challenge of small-batch, high-mix production lines that traditional industrial robots struggle with. Casbot’s robots, equipped with dexterous five-finger hands, can mimic human-level coordination to perform complex sequences such as screw fastening, cable insertion, and multi-angle quality inspections—tasks that require precise two-handed manipulation. Their ability to quickly learn and generalize new tasks across different settings makes them well-suited for dynamic production line reconfigurations.

Beyond its core industrial and mining focus, Casbot is also developing a standardized product line for education and broader commercial services, leveraging a modular architecture for rapid deployment and environmental adaptation. The company envisions a future where humanoid robots are broadly deployed across multiple sectors, pushing the boundaries of embodied intelligence in real-world scenarios.

Investors expressed strong support for Casbot’s pragmatic approach. Lens Technology lauded Casbot for effectively balancing innovation with practical implementation, noting the relevance of its technology to modern factory operations. They plan to support Casbot with component supply and assembly resources to facilitate scaled production and cost efficiency, and intend to integrate Casbot's robots into their own smart manufacturing processes. Tianjin Jiayi echoed these sentiments, emphasizing Casbot’s differentiated advantage in the mining sector and its proven ability to translate engineering expertise into sustainable business growth in a competitive field.