AsianFin – Hangzhou-based robotics startup Westlake Robotics has successfully raised nearly 100 million yuan ($13.6 million) in its Angel+ funding round.
This funding announcement comes just two days after Westlake Robotics launched its official website.
The company has attracted top talent, building a robust team comprising executives and scientists from leading institutions such as Huawei, Alibaba, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and Beijing Institute of Technology.
This talent pool, supported by the theoretical foundation from the Machine Intelligence Laboratory (MiLAB) at West Lake University, enables Westlake Robotics to develop an end-to-end solution for embodied AI, spanning from large AI models to hardware mass production.
In terms of software and models, Westlake Robotics unveiled its end-to-end AI large model in 2024. The model features capabilities such as multimodal instruction following, posture completion, behavior interpretation, and the ability to learn thousands of tasks in a single session, significantly boosting learning efficiency.
Additionally, the company constructed the world’s largest database of human body joint motion trajectories in the same year.
On the hardware front, the company is on the brink of mass production for several robotic platforms, including bipedal and quadrupedal robots. Westlake Robotics has completed three iterations of its quadrupedal robots in 2024, developing the mechanical body structure, hardware circuits, and seamless wheel-foot switching system independently. The robots feature multi-terrain adaptive walking, stair climbing, and self-recovery from falls.
According to the plan, Westlake Robotics will begin deploying real-world machines in the industry in the first half of 2025. It is estimated that by 2025, West Lake Robotics' business scenarios will span multiple industries, including scientific research, new energy, real estate, property management, logistics, animal husbandry, and automotive.
The company has already signed strategic cooperation agreements with several major group companies to accelerate the application of embodied intelligence in various industries. In terms of models, Westlake Robotics' multimodal large models will focus on the development of refined control capabilities and behavior planning abilities. By expanding the parameter scale, the company aims to achieve the scaling up of large models.
