Ant Lingbo targets 1.5 billion yuan first round for embodied AI

Ant Group's embodied AI unit Lingbo is raising 1.5 billion yuan in its first round, a pace that would outpace most robotics startups.

Ant Group's wholly owned embodied intelligence subsidiary Lingbo is raising 1.5 billion yuan in its first financing round, a fundraising pace that would outstrip typical robotics startups as China's physical-AI sector shifts to a competition over "general robot brains."

"We are indeed in contact with investors," a Lingbo spokesperson said, confirming the round and adding that the company plans to complete a second round by the end of 2026.

Lingbo has released more than 10 LingBot models covering visual perception, spatial understanding, task decision-making and action generation. Its flagship LingBot-VLA 2.0 foundation model has been adapted in pre-training to 20 robot configurations across 17 brands including Unitree, AgiBot, Galaxy General and Leju. As of July, Lingbo's full model lineup had accumulated nearly 30,000 stars on GitHub, about 2.7 times the count of the second-ranked domestic embodied team.

Ant Group has already poured more capital into Lingbo than the typical first-tier startup funding round, and the parent will keep backing it as its core vehicle in embodied and physical AI, including AI infrastructure and application resources. The company is testing commercialization in retail and logistics.

The embodied intelligence sector is entering what Lingbo describes as a "brain" phase, where model capability, real-world data and scaled deployment efficiency are the core competitive levers. Unlike hardware-focused robotics firms that sell arms, grippers and chassis, Lingbo concentrates on the software layer — a general-purpose brain reusable across multiple robot bodies, a strategy known as "one brain, many machines."

That focus puts Lingbo in direct competition with a growing field of Chinese embodied-AI model developers, including teams backed by Tencent and ByteDance, as well as specialized startups. The 1.5 billion yuan round, if completed, would give Lingbo one of the larger war chests in the domestic segment, where most early-stage robotics companies raise between 100 million and 500 million yuan per round.

Ant's Bet on Physical AI

For Ant Group, the investment extends a broader push into AI infrastructure and applications beyond its core fintech business. The company has been building out large-model capabilities and cloud services, and Lingbo represents its most direct entry into physical AI — software that lets machines perceive and act in the real world.

The funding also points to growing convergence between financial technology and robotics, as Ant applies its data and AI infrastructure expertise to a sector investors increasingly view as the next platform opportunity. Companies with complete model systems and closed-loop deployment capabilities are best positioned to emerge as platform-level players, according to the company.

For investors, the round shows the scale of capital flowing into China's embodied-AI software layer, where model developers are competing for the same pool of funding that once went to hardware startups. Ant's willingness to fund Lingbo beyond typical startup rounds suggests the parent sees physical AI as a strategic priority rather than a side bet, a view that could pressure rivals to match its spending.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.