Dexmal Seeks $3 Billion Valuation as Robotics AI Funding Accelerates
PYMNTS wrote, citing Bloomberg, that Chinese embodied-AI robotics firm Dexmal is seeking a 20 billion yuan valuation while public and private funding expands around humanoid robotics.
Dexmal is seeking a 20 billion yuan, or about $3 billion, valuation in a new funding round as Chinese embodied-AI robotics companies draw heavier capital commitments, PYMNTS wrote, citing Bloomberg.
The talks remain ongoing.
Founder Tang Wenbin described the round as unfinished, and earlier Dexmal financing was led by Alibaba Group Holding, giving the company a large internet and AI backer as it develops software for controlling robots.
China Funds Embodied AI
Dexmal's target sits inside a wider Chinese push to turn humanoid and embodied AI from demonstrations into deployed machines.
More than 140 Chinese humanoid robotics companies are already producing at scale and moving systems into factories, hotels and offices.
Government policy is reinforcing that company formation.
Beijing and other cities have created sector investment vehicles whose combined size exceeds $26 billion, while public agencies and state-owned businesses are using robots in museums, at events and for some traffic-direction work.
Capital Moves Beyond China
Funding for physical AI is not limited to Chinese robotics developers.
Atoms, the company founded by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, raised $1.7 billion in July for industrial physical-AI applications across mining, construction, heavy transport and food production.
U.K.-based Humanoid also raised $152 million in a Series A round in July and called itself Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn.
The new capital is meant to support its humanoid robotics platform and long-term deployments with logistics, manufacturing and retail customers.
Robot Orders Show A Price Shift
The investment race is landing in a market where buyers are paying more for robots as well as ordering more of them.
The Association for Advancing Automation recorded 8,940 North American robot orders worth $622 million in the second quarter.
Those orders were up 4.3% in units and 21.3% in revenue from a year earlier.
Order value is therefore rising much faster than volume, a sign from the automation group that customers are choosing more capable and higher-priced machines than they did a year ago.
