- Hangzhou startup targets high-risk sectors with robotics-plus-AI inspection systems
- Company develops multimodal “engineering brain” for infrastructure diagnostics
Open Journey Technology (旷行科技), a Hangzhou-based embodied AI startup, has raised a pre-Series A funding round worth several million yuan, as investors increasingly place bets on robotics systems designed for hazardous industrial environments.
The round was jointly backed by Caitong Securities-affiliated Caitong Capital and SenseTime’s venture arm SenseCapital, with proceeds earmarked for algorithm development, product expansion and market growth.
Founded in 2025, Open Journey focuses on deploying “robot plus AI brain” systems across high-risk sectors including mining, power generation, oil and gas, petrochemicals, and infrastructure construction.
‘Engineering brain’
The startup said its core system goes beyond mobility, enabling robots to perform what it calls “engineering brain” functions — identifying, diagnosing and responding to industrial hazards in complex environments.
It uses a self-developed multimodal foundation model that combines image, point cloud, ultrasound, electromagnetic and infrared data to detect structural issues such as concrete cracking, steel corrosion and geotechnical instability, the company said.
Founder Shu Jiangpeng, a researcher under Zhejiang University’s “Hundred Talents Program” and doctoral supervisor, has led the team’s work in smart city AI and robotics for more than 15 years.
The company also cites its data and vertical algorithms as a core moat, built on Zhejiang University’s civil engineering expertise.
It claims to have one of the world’s largest structured multimodal infrastructure databases, with millions of annotated samples covering material defects, equipment failures and safety-related cases.
The startup says its dataset is at least “two orders of magnitude” larger than peers, though it has not provided any supporting data.
Status of commercialization
Open Journey said it has already signed contracts with major clients including Jiangxi Copper, State Grid Corporation of China and Power Construction Corporation of China, worth several million yuan, with pilot deployments in mining, tunneling and power infrastructure.
Shu said that in mining applications, a single hazardous tunnel section typically requires four workers per shift and annual operating costs exceeding 1 million yuan (147,798).
“A fully equipped quadruped robot can cost tens of thousands of yuan at scale and operate for up to three years, significantly reducing costs while avoiding shutdown risks from safety incidents,” Shu said.
He added that current systems still require human involvement in roughly half of tasks, with the goal of raising automation coverage to more than 90% through continued data accumulation and algorithm iteration.
Investors’ views
Caitong Capital said in a press release that Open Journey differentiates itself by combining robotics hardware with a multimodal engineering model and long-term industrial datasets, addressing a common industry gap where inspection robots can “patrol but not diagnose.”
High-risk industrial environments make “machine substitution” increasingly necessary, and that the company’s integrated hardware-software approach positions it as a full-stack solution provider for inspection and maintenance automation, the other backer SenseCapital said.
