Tsinghua Professor's New Venture PokeBot Raises Pre-A Round Led by Shunwei and Matrix

PokeBot, a general embodied intelligence company, announced a billion-dollar Pre-A funding round on August 3rd. The round was co-led by Shunwei Capital and Matrix Partners, with participation from Jiukun Capital, Junshan Capital, SEEFund, Liepin Investment, Yuannuo Capital, Zhongding Capital, and others. Existing investors including Yunchuang Capital, Xiaomi Strategic Investment, Honghui Fund, Yingnuo Angel Fund, and Oriental Jiafu also increased their stakes. This marks the company's second funding round within five months of its founding.

Founder Xu Huazhe graduated from Tsinghua University's Electronic Engineering Department and earned his PhD from UC Berkeley, followed by postdoctoral research at Stanford. He is currently an assistant professor at Tsinghua's Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences and leads the university's Embodied Intelligence Lab. In 2023, Xu co-founded embodied intelligence company Xinghaitu, where he served as chief scientist before leaving to establish PokeBot in March 2026 when Xinghaitu's valuation was at a high point.

Xu explained that many robot companies are sending humanoid robots into factories to do work traditional robotic arms already handle, which he views as 'using new humanoids to do old-era tasks.' He believes true AGI should emerge in home scenarios, arguing that the chaos and randomness of home environments provide the best training ground for general models.

The core team at PokeBot consists of about 20 members, primarily from Tsinghua's Embodied Intelligence Lab, covering the full chain from foundation models and reinforcement learning to hardware R&D and commercialization. In July, Liu Shuo, former head of Meituan's drone business management and secretary-general of Meituan Robotics Research Institute, joined as the company's first business partner. Liu brings experience across autonomous driving, data technology, and robotics, and is seen as a key signal of PokeBot's move from R&D to market.