- Dexterous-hand maker reaches $1 billion valuation five months after launch
- Funding to support manufacturing scale-up, data development and AI model research
Agilink (临界点), a Chinese developer of robotic dexterous hands, has raised nearly 1 billion yuan ($147 million) in a new funding round, pushing its valuation above $1 billion and making it one of the fastest-growing unicorns in embodied AI.
The round was co-led by strategic and industrial investors including Mirae Asset Global Investments, an undisclosed internet company and Jingming Capital. Other backers included Dongfeng Asset Management, Digital China Investment, SEARI Capital, Fresh Capital, CapitalLink and Puhua Capital.
Existing shareholders including GL Ventures, Lanchi Ventures and C Capital also increased their stakes.
To date, the company has completed four funding rounds in just five months since its establishment. The Shanghai-based startup did not disclose the amount raised during the previous three rounds.
Agilink said the proceeds from the latest round will be used to expand manufacturing capacity, build a data flywheel for dexterous manipulation and advance development of its Contact Intelligence model.
Spun out of the Agibot ecosystem
The company is a spinout from embodied AI and general-purpose robotics developer Agibot (智元机器人) and focuses on dexterous-hand hardware and algorithms.
Agibot initially invested 4 million yuan for an 80% stake. Following multiple fundraising rounds, its ownership has been diluted to about 67%, though it remains the controlling shareholder.
Agilink said it has delivered more than 8,000 units of its OmniHand series and over 10,000 robotic grippers since inception. The company claimed to have achieved operating profitability in the first quarter of 2026.
However, it did not disclose its customer mix or the breakdown between domestic and overseas sales.
At the ICRA 2026 conference in Vienna earlier this month, Agilink unveiled its flagship OmniHand 3 Ultra-M. The fully direct-drive dexterous hand features 20 active degrees of freedom, fingertip vision-touch sensors and more than 300 three-dimensional tactile sensing points across the palm.
From flashy demo to meaningful work
Investor enthusiasm for dexterous-hand technology has accelerated as humanoid robotics shifts from demonstrating mobility to performing useful work.
As one of the most valuable components in a humanoid robot, accounting for roughly 18% of total system value, dexterous hands are widely viewed as critical to enabling robots to handle real-world tasks.
According to GGII, an industry-focused think tank, China’s dexterous-hand sector attracted nearly 5 billion yuan in disclosed financing during the first quarter of this year alone, about 70% more than the total raised in all of 2025.
The market sold about 19,200 dexterous hands last year, up 236.8% from a year earlier, with shipments projected to reach 70,200 units in 2026 and exceed 430,000 units by 2030.
Fundraising on steroids
The sector’s leading companies have been raising capital at a rapid pace. Beijing-based LinkerBot (灵心巧手), the largest Chinese developer of robotic hands by known shipments, secured nearly 1.5 billion yuan in a Series B round in February 2026 and completed a follow-on Series B+ round in April.
Another player, PaXini (帕西尼感知) in southern China’s tech hub Shenzhen, bagged more than 1 billion yuan in a Series B round of financing in March and Hangzhou-based Xynova (曦诺未来) completed a Series A funding round worth several hundred million yuan in May.
Analysts said the surge in investment suggests capital markets are moving beyond proof-of-concept bets and increasingly positioning for large-scale commercial deployment.
