China · Wired
The $6 Billion Chinese Startup Trying to Build Hands for Every Robot
Compiled by KHAO Editorial — aggregated from 1 source. See llms.txt for citation guidance.
◌ Single Source
This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China’s leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands.
Key facts
- The startup’s hardware comes complete with five fingers and at least 11 joints and is sold for as little as $600 in China
- The company says it shipped 10,000 robotic hands last year, representing 80 percent of worldwide demand
- In three to five years, Zhou predicts, the price for one will fall to $200
- The startup is also a venture capital darling: It completed six rounds of fundraising in 13 months from investors including the Chinese government, Alibaba’s Ant Group, and HongShan Capital, Sequoia
Summary
If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? The startup’s hardware comes complete with five fingers and at least 11 joints and is sold for as little as $600 in China. Marketing spectacles like the humanoid robot marathon in Beijing have drawn attention to robots’ legs, but the real frontier in humanoids is hands. The company says it shipped 10,000 robotic hands last year, representing 80 percent of worldwide demand. The startup is also a venture capital darling: It completed six rounds of fundraising in 13 months from investors including the Chinese government, Alibaba’s Ant Group, and HongShan Capital, Sequoia Capital’s Chinese spinoff. In 2019, after selling a previous startup focused on autonomous driving, Zhou turned his attention to robotics.