Alibaba and China Mobile Back Space Robotics Startup Xianyin Future in Three Rounds
Anhui Xianyin Future Technology disclosed staged funding progress on October 12. Between May and September 2026, the company closed angel, Pre-A and A rounds within four months, raising several hundred million yuan in total.
The angel round was led by BlueRun Ventures, Hillhouse Venture Capital and Binfu Capital, with industrial players including AgiBot and Trina Solar participating. Huaying Capital led the Pre-A round, joined by existing shareholders, while Alibaba and China Mobile's chain-chief fund led the A round.
The three rounds brought together leading dual-currency funds, industrial capital and state-backed institutions. The angel round was earmarked for product development and market promotion; later allocations were not disclosed separately, but on-orbit verification in 2027 is the largest planned expenditure.
Xianyin Future was registered in Hefei High-tech Zone in September 2025, incubated from a technology transfer by Tsinghua University automation professor Liang Bin's team and the Jianghuai Frontier Technology Collaborative Innovation Center.
Liang is one of China's leading academic figures in space robotics, credited with advancing domestic space robots from nothing to something and from rigid to flexible. He served as chief designer and chief commander of China's first major space robotics project.
He holds one special-class National Science and Technology Progress Award, one provincial technological invention first prize and three provincial science and technology progress first prizes, and received the 2024 Qian Xuesen Outstanding Contribution Award from the China Aerospace Foundation in 2025 — one of only 20 recipients nationwide that year.
His team has spent more than 20 years on space robots and hyper-redundant flexible manipulators, with nearly 90% of members holding master's or doctoral degrees, and its cable-driven robots have already been verified in orbit.
Tian Yingmei, general manager of Xianyin Future and a Chinese Academy of Sciences graduate who worked deeply on Liang's space projects, recalled that in late 2024 Liang proposed industrializing cable-driven technology. Rigid robots crowd the market, she noted, while the advantages of flexible cable-driven systems in extreme environments are rarely recognized.
That judgment shaped the company's direction: it avoids humanoids and general-purpose platforms, focusing instead on two extreme scenarios — on-orbit servicing and deep-sea special operations.
The core technology is a cable-driven flexible tendon-like actuation system. Flexible cables replace rigid links, and tension closed-loop control transmits power over distance while driving multi-degree-of-freedom joints. It rests on three original technologies: flexible actuation design, position-shape coordinated motion planning and space compliant control.
Compared with rigid arms, the advantages map onto three space requirements: flexibility for complex winding, obstacle avoidance and wide extension; safety, since soft cables pose far lower collision risk near spacecraft; and lightweight design, with rear-mounted motors and cable transmission cutting end-effector inertia.
Cable creep is a shared industry pain point, as repeated loads and severe temperature swings in space cause irreversible deformation and precision drift. Xianyin Future tackles it at three levels: selecting high-strength, low-creep specialty cables, adding adaptive auto-preload devices, and folding flexible deformation and hysteresis into control models based on non-smooth dynamics.
Commercially, the company targets three on-orbit servicing directions: refueling to extend the life of depleted spacecraft, assisted deorbit of failed and retired satellites, and on-orbit inspection and maintenance of space facilities.
Space is the core deployment scenario. The company's cable-driven technology has completed multiple in-orbit tests and partnerships with several aerospace institutes and commercial space companies. It plans space rendezvous and docking verification in 2027, focused on real-world validation of refueling and assisted deorbit, alongside space tactile sensing and autonomous decision-making, with pre-commercial pilots alongside leading space computing and space photovoltaic players before scaling to commercial service.
Deep sea serves as a second extension of the same technology. The team is adapting cable-driven systems to pipeline inspection in high-pressure, highly corrosive environments. Because buoyancy in water resembles microgravity in space, the technology transfers directly, and principle verification has been completed in water tanks. Angel investor Trina Solar's space photovoltaic business offers synergy with the company's on-orbit servicing capabilities.
The in-orbit servicing robot market is expanding rapidly and China's competitive landscape is taking shape. Xianyin Future's three rounds in four months, backed by a dense lineup of industrial players, is testing the capital appeal of "space embodied intelligence" as a standalone segment.