- The embodied AI startup has set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Hangzhou’s Shangcheng District
- Backed by CATL, Meituan and miHoYo, Galaxea is expanding into a city emerging as a major hub for China’s robotics industry
Tsinghua-backed embodied AI startup Galaxea (星海图) has established a wholly owned subsidiary in Hangzhou, deepening its presence in a city that has become a magnet for China’s fast-growing robotics industry.
Galaxea registered Hangzhou Galaxea Artificial Intelligence Technology Co. on August 24 with 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in capital, according to corporate registration data.
The new unit is based at Hanggang Technology Building in Hangzhou’s Shangcheng District.
Founded just two years ago in Suzhou, Galaxea was incubated by Tsinghua University’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences.
Its founder, Gao Jiyang (高继扬), studied under Turing Award-winning computer scientist Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (姚期智) and worked at autonomous driving firm Momenta as an executive director before quitting to set up his own venture.
The startup has attracted a consortium of heavyweight investors, including Ant Group, Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, Baidu, Meituan, CATL, miHoYo and Capital Today.
In February 2026, it raised nearly 2 billion yuan in a Series B+ round, bringing cumulative funding to almost 3 billion yuan and its valuation above 20 billion yuan.
Moving into Hangzhou’s robotics cluster
Galaxea’s expansion puts it directly into one of China’s most concentrated embodied-AI markets.
Hangzhou is home to a growing group of robotics companies, including Unitree (宇树科技), DEEP Robotics (云深处科技) and Spirit AI (千寻智能).
Unitree has gone public on Shanghai’s STAR Market with a market value of more than 200 billion yuan, while DEEP Robotics has focused on quadruped robots for inspection and other industrial applications.
Unlike hardware-focused rivals, Galaxea is building its technology around vision-language-action models, or VLA, and an end-to-end development platform.
Its R1 Pro and R1 Lite wheeled dual-arm robotic platforms are designed to connect the model layer with physical robots and development tools. Galaxea says the platforms have been adopted by 90% of the world’s top robotics developers.
The company’s Hangzhou presence is not entirely new. It previously participated in the development of a national AI application pilot base in Binjiang District, providing embodied-AI robots and pre-trained models.
The new subsidiary suggests that cooperation is now moving beyond individual projects toward a more permanent regional operation.
From developer tools to real-world deployment
For Galaxea, Hangzhou offers more than a technology ecosystem. The city’s AI infrastructure provides access to computing resources, data and real-world testing environments.
These factors could help the company move its technology beyond developers and into industrial manufacturing, smart retail and other commercial settings.
The move comes as China’s embodied-AI sector enters a more demanding phase, with investors and industrial customers increasingly focused on whether robots can perform reliably in real-world environments and generate repeatable commercial returns.
For Hangzhou, Galaxea’s arrival adds another well-funded embodied-AI player to a cluster that already includes several unicorn companies.
The concentration of robotics developers, manufacturers, investors and application partners could give the city an advantage in shortening the cycle from model development to testing and commercial deployment.
Galaxea’s expansion therefore reflects a broader shift in the industry: as competition moves beyond robot hardware and model demonstrations, the density of the ecosystem itself is becoming a competitive asset.
