BEIJING: Spirit AI has raised $145 million in a new funding, bringing total funding across all rounds to approximately $420 million. The fresh round was co-led by Shunwei Capital and Yunfeng Fund. The Beijing startup is building what it calls a universal AI brain for general-purpose humanoid robots.
Founded in February 2024 by Han Fengtao, Spirit AI develops vision-language-action models that power physical robots in real-world environments. Its Moz1 humanoid robot features 26 degrees of freedom and full-body force control. The company’s Spirit v1.5 foundation model was open-sourced in January 2026 and topped the RoboChallenge global leaderboard.
Spirit AI has transitioned from research to real-world deployment, with its Xiaomo robot already operating on battery assembly lines at CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer.
The robot manages flexible wire harnesses, once considered too complex for automation, with a 99% success rate comparable to skilled human workers. Its Moz robots are also being used in JD.com retail environments.
What differentiates Spirit AI is its data strategy. Instead of relying on curated datasets, the company uses “dirty data”, raw human video and wearable sensor inputs from real-world interactions. This approach cuts data acquisition costs by up to 90% compared to traditional teleoperation.
So far, Spirit AI has collected over 200,000 hours of interaction data and aims to reach one million hours by the end of 2026.
The company expects its revenue to surpass 100 million yuan this year, with new funding directed toward scaling its embodied AI models and expanding data pipelines. While competitors like Google DeepMind and Physical Intelligence are advancing in this space, Spirit AI stands out as the only player currently deployed on a large-scale industrial production line.
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