Zhongqing Robotics Co-founder: Humanoid Robot Industry Is Only 5% Along the Way

At an interview in Shenzhen on September 24, 2026, Yao Qiyuan, co-founder of humanoid robot developer Zhongqing Robotics, said the company has completed a $200 million Series B round co-led by Luxshare Precision, pushing its valuation above 10 billion yuan since its founding in October 2023.

Yao emphasized the company's commitment to bipedal humanoid robots, with products including SA01, PM01 and the full-size T800. The T800 has been deployed at Luxshare's Suzhou factory for material handling and loading/unloading tasks. He compared the humanoid robot industry to the auto industry, noting it may have only advanced 5% to 6% along the development curve.

Zhongqing has built a full-stack self-developed technology system covering actuators, body, cerebellum and brain, and released a brain-inspired five-layer architecture in 2026. Yao also discussed robot fighting as an extreme testing ground, where unstructured matches help identify weaknesses, and as a way to build a developer ecosystem. The company's open-source strategy provides training code, motion data and deployment tutorials to accelerate adoption.

Yao said the industry's biggest bottleneck is not a single technology but the lack of standardized full-stack capabilities and industry norms, such as universal connector standards for end effectors and certification systems for robots.