Lingyan Technology Raises Tens of Millions in Seed and Seed+ Funding for Expressive Robot Faces

Lingyan Technology, a Hangzhou-based embodied AI startup, has completed a seed round and seed+ round totaling tens of millions of yuan. The funding will support its work on bionic robot faces capable of making the right expression at the right time—an effort focused on synchronizing lip movement, gaze and micro-expressions with speech to reduce the uncanny-valley effect. The company is developing expressive bionic heads for service and interactive scenarios.

In summer 2026, in a 300-square-meter office at Zhejiang Overseas High-level Talent Innovation Park in Yuhang, Hangzhou, 20 to 30 young employees worked around a robot head skeleton. Some tuned the texture of bionic facial skin; others adjusted makeup at a painting station with the precision of cosmetic application. Near the entrance stood a skirted body with a fully assembled hyper-realistic female head; it will serve as the company’s receptionist. Founder Zhao Changyi asked the robot, “How’s the weather today?” It tilted its head slightly, parted its lips and moved its gaze naturally toward him.

The company says such interactions demand tight coordination between mechanical structure, skin materials and control algorithms. Even a fractional delay in motion or lip-sync can trigger discomfort, because people have very low tolerance for facial unnaturalness. Lingyan’s demonstration suggests progress in making bionic faces feel coherent rather than eerie, a key step for service robots that need to communicate naturally with humans. The round is expected to accelerate testing and commercialization of the technology.