
Archon Robotics closes record seed round to build foundation model
Archon aims to release what it says will be the world’s first open-source humanoid foundation model later this year.

Archon aims to release what it says will be the world’s first open-source humanoid foundation model later this year.
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Founder and CEO Zhu Qiuguo said long-term competitiveness will no longer depend on standalone hardware or software, but instead on five integrated capabilities.

The IPO has attracted 14 cornerstone investors, who have collectively committed about $376 million and will subscribe to nearly half of the shares on offer.

It took the company 11 months to grow from its 1,000th to its 5,000th robot, 3.5 months to reach 10,000 units, and less than three months to add another 5,000 robots.

Growth was increasingly driven by the city’s “three leading industries,” meaning integrated circuits, AI and biomedicine.

Anhui has also become a national leader in automotive production, with both combustion and electric vehicle output now ranking first in China.

Industrial output generated by firms with annual main-business revenue of 20 million yuan ($2.94 million) and more grew 5.0% year-on-year.

The Hangzhou-based AI upstart is among 308 newly added unicorns globally and has also entered the top 15 of the overall global unicorn ranking.

The performance marks the seventh consecutive year that Alibaba Cloud has ranked first in the market since 2019.

The decline marked one of the steepest first-day drops for a Chinese listing in recent years.