Intro
Spirit AI (千寻智能) is a cutting-edge Chinese robotics startup founded in early 2024, focused on embodied intelligence—integrating AI large models with robotics hardware to create highly capable humanoid robots. The company boasts a world-class team with backgrounds from UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, and leading tech firms such as ByteDance, Xiaomi, Tencent, and DJI.
Co-founded by Dr. Han Fengtao, an experienced roboticist and former CTO of Rokae Robotics, and Professor Gao Yang, a leading AI researcher from UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University, Spirit AI combines deep expertise in robotics hardware and AI software. The company emphasizes a full-stack approach, integrating pre-trained large models, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning to enable robots to perform complex, long-horizon tasks autonomously.
Spirit AI has developed proprietary embodied large model architectures (e.g., Spirit v1 VLA) capable of handling challenging manipulation tasks such as folding clothes—a first in China for flexible object long-range manipulation. Their humanoid robots demonstrate advanced dexterity, natural language understanding, and multi-task continuous operation.
Spirit AI has rapidly gained industry recognition, completing a RMB 528 million (approx. $75 million) Pre-A funding round led by Prosperity7 Ventures (P7) with participation from major investors including China Merchants Venture Capital and Guangfa Xinde. The company is scaling its team and technology to accelerate iteration of embodied large models, robot hardware evolution, and commercial deployment.
Robots
- Spirit v1 VLA: An embodied large model robot capable of executing complex multi-step manipulation tasks such as folding clothes with high precision and continuous operation. The full version is expected to be publicly released soon.
- Moz1: Moz1 performs complex, continuous manipulation and service tasks requiring high precision and adaptability, such as folding clothes and other multi-step operations. It executes instructions given in natural language, leveraging advanced AI models to understand and interact with its environment safely and efficiently.
Specialism
Spirit AI specializes in embodied intelligence robotics, combining advanced AI large models with sophisticated robotics hardware for general-purpose humanoid robots. Their focus is on enabling robots to perform complex, flexible, and continuous tasks in real-world environments through reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and natural language interaction.
Business Viability
- Strong leadership with deep expertise in robotics and AI from top global institutions.
- Rapid growth with nearly 60 employees and expanding team.
- Completed significant Pre-A funding of 528 million RMB led by prominent investors, signaling strong market confidence.
- Proprietary AI and robotics technology achieving industry-leading breakthroughs in manipulation and embodied intelligence.
- Focused on real-world applications and commercial scalability.
- Collaborations and recruitment of top talent from academia and industry.
- Positioned as a pioneer in China’s embodied AI robotics space.
