**Title:** 34岁清华毕业生，28个月制造百亿独角兽<br/>(34-Year-Old Tsinghua Graduate Creates Centibillion-Dollar Unicorn in 28 Months)
**Date:** February 12, 2026
**Source/Media:** 21世纪商业评论 (21st Century Business Review) / 21经济网 (21jingji.com)
**Author:** 雷子桐 (Lei Zitong)
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## Article Content
A specialized robotics company named Xinghai Tu announced the completion of a 1 billion yuan Series B funding round on February 11, achieving a valuation exceeding 10 billion yuan—just 28 months after establishment. The funding will support development of embodied AI foundation models, hardware production expansion, and global developer ecosystem building.
Xinghai Tu is now the fourth centibillion-yuan startup in China's embodied intelligence sector, following Unitree, ZiYuan, and Galaxy General.
The founder and CEO, Gao Jiyang, age 34, graduated from Tsinghua University's Department of Electronic Engineering before pursuing doctoral studies in computer vision at USC. He subsequently worked at autonomous driving companies including Waymo and Momenta, leading full-stack autonomous driving algorithm development and commercialization before age 30.
Gao and co-founder Zhao Xing established Xinghai Tu in September 2023, combining cutting-edge algorithms with autonomous driving production experience to create universal embodied AI "brains" compatible with various robot platforms for scalable deployment.
Within five months, they secured ten-million-dollar angel funding. Beginning in 2025, they completed Series A rounds, and with the 10 billion yuan Series B, total fundraising now approaches 3 billion yuan.
In 28 months, the company's valuation grew over 100-fold.
**Hardware Strategy**
Rather than pursuing the industry's focus on bipedal humanoid robots, Gao strategically pivoted toward wheeled, dual-arm robot R1 series—offering superior stability, controlled costs, and deployment flexibility. These gained rapid adoption from global research institutions.
In 2025, Xinghai Tu shipped thousands of units to university labs, major research institutes, and industrial leaders including Huawei and BYD. The R1 platform covers over 90% of top global developers, with institutions like Stanford's Li Feifei team and Physical Intelligence using it as their research foundation.
The company plans May releases of dexterous hands and bipedal humanoid robots, expanding its hardware portfolio.
Gao emphasizes their approach: "First secure developer ecosystem with reliable hardware, build data feedback loops, then expand to challenging scenarios." This strategy avoids industry pitfalls of difficult production scaling, high costs, and slow deployment.
**Technology Differentiation**
Xinghai Tu pursues "real-machine data-driven plus model-hardware coordination" technical paths. Throughout 2025, via internal and outsourced systems, they accumulated approximately 100,000 hours of real-machine data across multiple authentic scenarios. Plans for 2026 include expanding datasets to hundreds of thousands of hours using new collection methods like UMI, strengthening competitive advantages.
**Market Focus**
Strategic targets include intelligent manufacturing, logistics, and commercial service sectors. Investment partners—including BAIC Capital, Beihong Investments (Geely-affiliated), Goldin Capital, and Meituan-linked stakeholders—align with these directions.
Gao predicts: "Mid-to-late 2026 is the industry's verification period. Whether embodied AI companies achieve genuine human replacement and generate commercial value determines survival."