Galaxy General, an embodied AI and robotics company founded in May 2023, has raised about RMB 7 billion in 34 months and passed a valuation of RMB 20 billion, making it the most heavily financed company in China’s embodied intelligence sector, according to the source article.
The piece frames the company as more than a standard technology startup. It places Galaxy General at the intersection of technology narrative, capital competition and industrial expectations.
Founders, researchers and a boardroom change
The company’s best-known executive is founder and CTO Wang He. The article describes him as a Stanford PhD, a Peking University researcher, a Boya Young Scholar and a national-level overseas high-level talent recruit. Before launching the company, he focused on embodied intelligence and robotic manipulation.
Co-founder Zhang Zhizheng leads the large-model effort. He also headed development of the “Galaxy Xingshu” massive embodied intelligence dataset and serves as deputy director of the Beijing Key Laboratory for embodied intelligence large models.
Galaxy General also changed part of its leadership structure in July 2026. Ten management members, including then-chairman Guo Xiaoliang, exited, while nine new members joined. Yin Fangming became chairman.
Public records cited in the article say Yin’s career has included MediaTek, Sogou and 360. He also founded robotics company ROOBO and later moved into investing. One of his best-known investments was Unitree’s angel round.
The article reads that shift as a sign that Galaxy General is moving from a founder-led structure toward a combined capital-and-industry governance model.
Its academic committee is led by Chinese Academy of Engineering academician Gao Wen and includes scholars such as Zhang Jianwei, Zeng Wenjun, Wang Tianmiao and Chen Baoquan.
Product strategy: heavier on the model, lighter on the robot body
The article says Galaxy General has taken a route that differs sharply from Unitree’s: “heavy brain, light body.”
Its technical core is AstraBrain, a self-developed end-to-end embodied large model built around a full “brain-cerebellum-neural control” loop. On the cognition side, the company introduced AstraBrain WAM 0.5, which it described as the world’s first general brain base model, designed to unify vision-language-action and world-model paths. On the motion-control side, AstraBrain-WBC 0.5 was described as reaching GPT-1 scale and as the first validation of a scaling law in motion control.
In March 2026, the team achieved what the article called the world’s first autonomous tennis-playing humanoid robot. The robot was said to identify incoming balls, predict trajectories, maintain whole-body balance and return shots continuously. Elon Musk called it “the AlphaGo moment for embodied intelligence,” according to the report.
On the hardware side, Galaxy General has not emphasized building a body platform entirely from scratch. Instead, it uses mature hardware systems from companies including Unitree. In 2025, the article says Galaxy General contributed more than RMB 18 million in sales to Unitree.
That approach lets the company focus resources on algorithms and data rather than long hardware development cycles. The trade-off, as described in the article, is a weaker proprietary moat at the body-hardware layer and a heavier dependence on the real generalization ability of its large model.
Current products and deployment progress
The company’s disclosed product lineup includes three models:
- Galbot S1, a heavy-load robot for industrial use, listed on JD.com at about RMB 1.05 million;
- Galbot G1, a wheeled dual-arm robot for general service scenarios, priced at about RMB 700,000;
- ET1, a biped robot for household use released in August 2026 under the name “Galaxy Xingzai,” now in presale.
Galbot G1 also appeared on China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala in 2026 alongside actors Shen Teng and Ma Li. The article says that appearance led to it being known as the “Spring Festival Gala robot.”
In commercial deployment, S1 has entered CATL battery factories for 7×24 regular operations. G1 has expanded into retail, pharmacy and medical settings. The company’s “Galaxy Capsule” convenience store format has landed in more than 40 cities with over 170 stores.
Galaxy General also signed a global strategic cooperation agreement with Ningjia Service, a CATL affiliate. Under that arrangement, more than 1,300 service stations will handle robot installation, deployment, maintenance and repairs.
Six funding rounds in 34 months
The source article presents Galaxy General’s fundraising record as a snapshot of how capital has evolved in embodied intelligence.
In June 2023, the company raised a seed round worth tens of millions of yuan from Matrix Partners China and Lanchi Ventures.
In June 2024, it completed a RMB 700 million angel round. The investor list widened sharply to include nine market-oriented institutions such as IDG Capital, SEE Fund, Guangyuan Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Guoxiang Capital, Source Code Capital and Yanyuan Ventures. Three industrial investors — Meituan, iFlytek Venture Capital and BAIC Industrial Investment — also joined, along with Zhongguancun Development Group as the first state-backed investor.
In November 2024, Galaxy General secured RMB 500 million in strategic financing from 22 investors. The article highlights concentrated state-capital participation as the key shift in that round. Investors included Shenzhen Capital Group, Zhongguancun Science City, China Internet Investment Fund, Jingguorui, Lingang Sci-Tech Innovation, HKIC, Shougang Fund and Shunxi Fund. Along with CCB International, CMB International, JL MAG and returning shareholders, state-backed and quasi-state capital accounted for more than half of the round.
In June 2025, the company raised RMB 1.1 billion in a Series B round. CATL and GGV Capital joined, while Jingguorui and Guokai Sci-Tech continued to invest. The article says CATL’s involvement was especially important because it was not only a financial investor, but also a source of thousand-unit robot orders and later global after-sales cooperation.
In December 2025, Galaxy General closed a Series B+ round worth more than $300 million, or about RMB 2.1 billion. China Mobile, CICC Capital, CMG Fusion Media Industry Fund, Miracle Automation Engineering and Suzhou Ventures entered the cap table. The role of central state-owned enterprises and national-level funds strengthened further.
In March 2026, the company raised RMB 2.5 billion in a Series B++ round. Participants included the National AI Industry Investment Fund, Sinopec Capital, CITIC Group, Bank of China, SAIC Motor and Semiconductor Manufacturing-related investor Zhongxin Juyuan, among nine investors in total. The article says state capital and central SOEs held a dominant position in that round.
Across 34 months, Galaxy General completed six rounds and raised about RMB 7 billion in total. After removing duplicates across rounds, the article counts about 47 investors: around 15 market-oriented institutions, around 17 state-backed or government-guided funds, and around 15 industrial investors or CVCs.
Questions beneath the momentum
The article lays out several risks alongside the company’s funding strength.
First is execution pressure. With a new round arriving on average in less than six months, each raise has required a new milestone to justify the next jump in valuation. The article says Galaxy General did provide a new story each time, from team and direction at the seed stage to prototypes at the angel stage, industrial customers at the strategic round and a national-level laboratory by the Series B stage. The harder question now is whether revenue can match a valuation above RMB 20 billion.
Second is the double-edged nature of a more state-backed investor base. State capital can provide credibility, policy support and deployment resources, including order coordination with companies such as CATL and China Mobile. At the same time, it can bring tighter requirements on exit certainty, asset safety and audit compliance, which may shape governance and strategy. The article argues that when the core financing logic shifts from venture capital return expectations to national strategic asset allocation, the handoff between those valuation systems may be tested in a future listing process.
Third is whether “investment for orders” can become sustainable business. The article says industrial investors such as CATL, SAIC, China Mobile and Sinopec can, in theory, deliver customers and purchase demand. But publicly verifiable large-scale commercial revenue remains limited. With G1 priced at about RMB 700,000 and S1 at about RMB 1.05 million, even delivery of hundreds of units would still leave a wide gap relative to a RMB 20 billion valuation, based on the article’s framing.
Public criticism has already surfaced
On Sept. 10, 2026, Mech-Mind founder Shao Tianlan publicly questioned the business models of some embodied intelligence companies in a WeChat Moments post, according to the article. Shao referred to some “well-known, highly valued companies that appeared on the Spring Festival Gala,” and alleged they used “data collection centers” and related-party transactions to manufacture revenue while relying on local governments and state-backed capital to push toward a listing. The article says the criticism pointed at Galaxy General.
Galaxy General later issued a statement in response, saying the company adheres to “real R&D, real scenarios and a real commercial closed loop.”
The source article says the dispute still needs time to be judged, but it already points to a broader issue for the sector: once embodied intelligence companies move from high private-market valuations to public-market scrutiny, commercialization will become the dividing line.
What the company now represents
The article treats Galaxy General as a typical sample of China’s embodied intelligence capital boom from 2023 to 2026. Its pace of raising about RMB 7 billion in 34 months reflects not only investor support for one company, but also the heat created by policy expectations, technology narrative and capital momentum across the sector.
By that reading, the next answer will not come from another funding round. It will come from repeated work performed on production lines, in pharmacies and inside convenience stores.
The original piece was published on the IT Juzi WeChat public account and credited to Judy under the title: “Galaxy General: 34 Months Since Founding, 6 Funding Rounds and RMB 7 Billion — The Confidence and Hidden Concerns Behind an Embodied Intelligence ‘Capital Magnet.’”