Sichuan Embodied Humanoid Robot Technology Co. (EIR) announced in mid-October the completion of a Pre-A funding round of over 100 million yuan. The capital will primarily fund iteration of its flagship product "Aiqiu" (a bipedal humanoid companion robot priced from 98,000 yuan), construction of a ten-thousand-unit-scale production base, and sales system buildout. Investors were not disclosed, and a new round has already begun.
A 98,000 yuan price tag for a small bipedal humanoid is one of the most aggressive points on the industry's price curve over the past two years.
💰 Where the money comes from and where it goes
The notable aspect of this round is its structure rather than its size. It is coordinated with Sichuan's humanoid robot pilot-scale (中试) maturation support program, forming a three-tier funding linkage of provincial, municipal, and county state-owned capital. For a company founded only in 2024 in Chengdu's Wuhou District, this funding chain means industrialization validation carries local government backing, and capacity building is now on the agenda.
The capital's destinations are specific: Aiqiu iteration and R&D, the Deyang Kaizhou New Town production base (production expected by end of 2026, scaling in stages from thousands to ten-thousand units), and sales system construction.
🎭 Expressions via projection
Aiqiu's most distinctive design is its face. The company claims a domestically pioneering 3D ultra-short-throw projection facial scheme: bionic expressions are projected onto a three-dimensional face, with digital content adaptation allowing one-click switching of appearance and expressions. Tourism characters and brand IPs can all inhabit the same face, giving the same hardware room for continuously updated expressions.
This choice reflects a trade-off: screens are cheap but flat; mechanical faces are expressive but expensive and hard to repair; projection faces sit in the middle, balancing approachable looks, mass-production yield and cost, and content-updatable longevity.
The company calls this philosophy "Emotion Native": emotional companionship is not a bolted-on feature but a design goal from day one, with body form, language understanding, facial expression, and motion control all serving that goal. The EIR HARNESS architecture orchestrates perception, interaction, memory, navigation, and locomotion. The core team descends from UESTC's robotics research center; founder Feng Zhenyu leads full-stack self-development covering the body, core algorithms, and key components.
Home scenarios impose hard requirements: beyond delivering objects and assisting with daily tasks, users expect the robot to follow conversations, respond appropriately, and build emotional connection over continuous cohabitation. Interaction must participate in hardware/software design from the start — real users change topics, shift needs, and convey unspoken meaning through tone and gesture; the robot must continuously understand context and keep language, expression, and action consistent.
The projection face also has an operational angle: tourism roles and brand IPs can be updated via digital content without returning hardware for a face swap — a path to turning hardware into an operable asset for banks, showrooms, and tourism venues.
📦 Selling more than Aiqiu
Three product lines are in batch delivery: Aiqiu for homes and public services, Tianxun quadruped for emergency inspection, and Tianwalker for professional scenarios like service-robot training grounds. Deployments span emergency inspection, training grounds, bank branches, and public services.
Industry context: Unitree shipped over 5,500 humanoids in 2025 (excluding wheeled dual-arm units); Zhiyuan (Agibot) surpassed 15,000 cumulative units by June 2026; UBTech's U1 series orders exceeded 13,361 units; Leju Intelligence's IPO was accepted in May 2026; Cloud Deep's STAR Market filing was accepted; Unitree passed IPO review in June.
| Benchmark | Figure | Source | |---|---|---| | Aiqiu starting price | 98,000 yuan | Company announcement | | This round | 100M+ yuan Pre-A | Company announcement; investors undisclosed | | Unitree humanoid shipments 2025 | 5,500+ units | Company-stated, excluding wheeled dual-arm | | Zhiyuan cumulative output | 15,000 units (June 2026) | Company-stated | | UBTech U1 orders | 13,361 units | Company-stated |
🪞 Company claims vs. unverified points
Price, capacity, and delivery progress are all company-reported with no third-party reviews. Mass-production yield of the projected face, outdoor sunlight performance, and long-term maintenance costs are undisclosed. Emotional companionship effectiveness has no reproducible metric. Execuzhong data gives a 66.29% probability of follow-on funding within two years — a data vendor's model, not fact.
Assessment: Whether companion robots hold up will be judged not at launch events but in repurchase rates and daily active usage. Home scenarios magnify both the experience and the flaws daily. Once the ten-thousand-unit base starts production, the first batch of real-user data will say more than this funding round.
Sources & caveats: Funding and product information derive from China Daily (reprinting Zidan Finance), Economic Observer, and Tencent News (reprinting STAR Market Daily), Oct 15–17; the company's official full announcements were not located. Industry figures are company self-reports; 66.29% is an Execuzhun prediction.
References
- Zidan Finance (via China Daily): "Securing 100M+ yuan funding, EIR bets on emotional companionship for the humanoid home endgame," 2026-10-17
- Economic Observer: "Sichuan Embodied secures 100M+ yuan funding, targeting humanoid emotional companionship market," 2026-10-16
- STAR Market Daily (via Tencent News): "Sichuan Embodied completes 100M+ yuan Pre-A round," 2026-10-16
- Sichuan Embodied product & capacity disclosures (as relayed by above reports), 2026-10
- Unitree, Zhiyuan, UBTech public disclosures (compiled by STAR Market Daily), 2026