Ant Group-backed Lingbo seeks 1.5 billion yuan in first funding round

Ant LingBot Technology, the embodied intelligence company under Ant Group previously referred to as Lingbo Technology, is seeking 1.5 billion yuan in its first funding round and plans to complete a second round by the end of this year. The company confirmed it is in contact with investors and said it will keep focusing on a general-purpose robot brain, step up investment in embodied-native technical approaches and speed industrial deployment. LatePost reported the first round could set a fundraising speed record for startups in embodied intelligence if completed on schedule. The company develops what it describes as a robot "general brain" meant to let one model adapt across different robot brands and physical forms, reducing the need to build separate intelligence systems for each machine. Its publicly demonstrated technology roadmap spans Vision, Depth, Mapping, Video, World Model, VA and VLA, covering most of the chain from perception and understanding to action. Official materials say it has launched multiple LingBot series models and is testing commercialization in retail, logistics and other scenarios. The fundraising push comes as investors increasingly focus on the software and data layers of robotics rather than hardware alone. The report compared Ant LingBot's approach with U.S.-based Physical Intelligence, which is seen as a representative brain-layer company in embodied intelligence and has achieved a valuation above $11 billion despite having almost no robot hardware products. Unitree's IPO prospectus also highlighted robot-brain development as a core use of proceeds, with the company seeking about 4.2 billion yuan. Analysts told LatePost that Ant Group has firmly committed to embodied intelligence, with cumulative investment in LingBot already exceeding the fundraising amounts of leading startups in the sector, though LingBot's eventual valuation will depend on whether it can show strong generalization, build large-scale deployment and data flywheel effects, and grow into a global physical AI foundation model platform.