Chinese Startup Ace Robotics Secures Angel Round Funding Led by Ant Group

Ace Robotics, a cutting-edge robotics startup focused on embodied intelligence, has completed its angel round, raising an undisclosed amount of money.

The round was led by Ant Group, with participation from Qiming Venture Partners, GVC, Hony Capital, Lenovo Capital, and the Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Lotus Capital. Existing investor SenseTime’s Sense Capital also increased their investments in the company.

The newly raised capital will be used to advance Ace Robotics' "human-centered" ACE full-stack embodied AI development paradigm, as well as to accelerate the iterative development of its Kairos 3.0 World Model. The company plans to scale its embodied "superbrain" modules and expand into various commercial sectors, including energy, transportation, and tourism.

“Embodied intelligence is an unlimited, rapidly growing field,” said Wang Xiaogang, the Chairman of Ace Robotics, and also co-founder and executive director at SenseTime. “Ace Robotics is committed to continuous technological innovation and a deep understanding of embodied intelligence scenarios. Together with our partners across the industry chain, we aim to create an open and collaborative ecosystem, transforming cutting-edge embodied AI technologies into new productive forces that drive industry progress. Our goal is for every robot to possess a ‘smart brain.’”

Ace Robotics has a team of top-tier talent with a combination of advanced technology expertise and industrial experience, including AI frontier scientists from institutions like Nanyang Technological University, the University of Hong Kong, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their innovation will help Ace Robotics stay at the forefront of key fields such as environmental intelligence, world models, and embodied AI.

In mid-December 2025, Ace Robotics launched its pioneering "human-centered" ACE embodied R&D paradigm, creating an integrated technological system for "environmental data collection – Kairos 3.0 world model – embodied interaction." This new approach is expected to bring a fundamental shift to the industry. The environmental data collection module in the ACE paradigm can gather millions of hours of data annually, while the Kairos 3.0 model maximizes the value of real-world data, aiming to resolve the "data scarcity" that has long hindered the growth of the embodied intelligence industry.

Ace Robotics’ innovative environmental data collection solution, in partnership with various partners, has propelled the development of the commercializable “Data Collection Experiment Field Project.” Kairos 3.0, the first open-source and commercially viable world model in China, leads in performance over global peers, providing tools and an API platform that enables the rapid emergence of lightweight, customized embodied AI products and facilitates ecosystem development.

The company's A1 embodied "superbrain" module offers versatile adaptability to different robot forms, enabling various robot dogs to “understand commands, navigate autonomously, and perform tasks.” Ace Robotics has already formed strategic partnerships with several ecosystem players, with successful deployments in inspection and tourism scenarios.

Leveraging its innovative ACE R&D paradigm and cutting-edge technology products, Ace Robotics is continuously expanding its network of strategic collaborations with embodied AI manufacturers, hardware, chip, cloud service providers, and data companies. Together, these partnerships aim to build an end-to-end, autonomous embodied intelligence ecosystem, establishing a solid foundation for R&D and application.