Investors include Vertex Ventures, the venture capital platform backed by Temasek, alongside Fangguang Capital and Wanshi Capital. The funding will be used to develop Kinetix AI’s data, foundation-model and robot hardware stack and move its embodied AI systems toward commercial deployment.
Kinetix AI (also known as Kai Robotics) was founded in Shenzhen in 2025 by a team spanning autonomous driving, robotics and academic AI research. CEO Yu Jie previously led Huawei’s commercial autonomous-driving business, including work on Level 4 autonomous mining trucks. Co-founder Luo Ping is a professor at the University of Hong Kong and leads HKU’s Multimedia Laboratory.
The company develops the KAI humanoid, a full-size robot introduced in April. KAI stands 1.73 meters tall and has 115 degrees of freedom, including 36 DoF in each hand. Its body incorporates about 18,000 tactile sensing points, while a 1.7 kWh semi-solid-state battery supports the platform.
Kinetix AI is developing the hardware alongside its KAI World Model, KAI Hand dexterous manipulation system, KAI Halo data-collection hardware and embodied AI infrastructure. The company says its target applications include factories, homes and commercial environments.
Its first high-dynamic test platform, SMASH, applies the company’s perception and whole-body control systems to humanoid table tennis. Kinetix demonstrated the system publicly this year, including a rally with Olympic table-tennis champion Ding Ning.
