NOUS ROBOT (NOUSBOT) recently completed a Series A funding round of over 100 million RMB.
This round was led by Shanghai Semiconductor Industry Investment, followed by Lenovo Ventures and Amber Capital, with strategic investments from automotive industry listed companies Kelei Electromechanical and Pengling Co., Ltd. Existing shareholder SAIC Financial Holdings continued to increase its investment. The funds will be used for capacity expansion, technology R&D iterations, and market expansion.
Founded in July 2023, NOUS ROBOT focuses on the R&D and mass production of planetary roller screws and micro linear actuators.
Regarding the team background, the company's technical advisor, Professor Xu Genlin, is a retired professor from Shanghai University with over 50 years of experience in mechanical manufacturing; the company's founder, Xu Yang, holds a master's degree from Tongji University and served as head of the R&D department at the Asia-Pacific R&D Center of French automotive giant Valeo Group; co-founder Wang Xiaobin served as deputy general manager of a Valeo Group subsidiary. Most of the executive team comes from Valeo.
Planetary roller screws are core components for linear transmission, and their miniaturization represents a technological high ground in precision mechanical manufacturing. NOUS ROBOT's core breakthrough is creating the world's smallest planetary roller screw—with a diameter of only 1.5mm and nut diameter of 5.5mm—yet it can stably output a load force of 10kg with a service life exceeding 3 million cycles.
Furthermore, the company has further integrated brushless motors and non-contact sensors to create the world's smallest integrated micro linear actuator. This breakthrough enables humanoid robot dexterous hands to independently drive each finger with high responsiveness and large load capacity for the first time, allowing them to perform delicate operations such as pinching pills, turning keys, and tying shoelaces.
"Our label is the world's smallest actuator and the actuator with the largest force for the same volume," explained Xu Yang, founder of NOUS ROBOT, to Hard氪 about their differentiated advantage. "If everyone makes them the same size, my force will be 4 to 5 times that of others. The deeper meaning of increased force is longer lifespan and durability."
More notably, NOUS has increased production efficiency by 10 times through fully self-developed processes, locking the unit price of micro planetary roller screws within 100 yuan, a two-order-of-magnitude decrease compared to current market sample prices. Xu Yang stated that this stems from the company's solid industrial foundation, with mature manufacturing capabilities and processes.
According to Xu Yang, the company's 1.5mm linear joint solution has been adopted by leading domestic humanoid robot manufacturers as the core execution unit for their new generation models, and they are jointly developing standardized modules with multiple leading companies specializing in dexterous hand technology.
At the same time, NOUS has entered the automotive drive-by-wire chassis market with the same technology platform. The company is collaborating with core Tier 1 suppliers of multiple vehicle manufacturers to develop roller screws for rear-wheel steering systems and participating in smart cockpit zero-gravity seat actuator projects.
Xu Yang revealed that with the order empowerment from industrial capital such as SAIC, the company's automotive business and robotics business currently form an approximately 50-50 split, building a dual-engine driven pattern of "humanoid robots + automotive."
"Real commercialization of humanoid robots still takes time, and the automotive business will bring greater stability to the company. Our ability to bind the most promising batch of customers in the elimination competition is a capability the team needs to predict in advance," said Xu Yang. Many automotive applications involve technology upgrades, and customers are waiting for new generation products to solve issues such as noise and failure in existing solutions. However, the company's focus remains on the robotics field, where demand is rapidly releasing.
Regarding future R&D, the company plans to develop more varieties this year, invest in automotive-grade testing laboratories, and continue to deepen research in two directions: precision and lifespan.
Specific technology iterations will mainly focus on two directions: first, developing towards higher precision, as humanoid robots have higher precision requirements than automobiles; second, further improving lifespan, as the risk of failure increases after volume compression, which requires in-depth exploration.
Investor Perspectives:
Shanghai Semiconductor Industry Investment team believes: We are optimistic about the embodied robotics direction, believing that components are the cornerstone supporting the entire industry. NOUS is developing core components for embodied robots—planetary roller screws—which have excellent application prospects in high-load scenarios with high technical barriers. Currently, the industry pain point is that existing grinding process equipment has high costs, low processing efficiency, and high-precision processing equipment is highly dependent on imports. NOUS has developed special processing processes based on over 30 years of industry-academia-research experience, greatly improving production efficiency and beginning to demonstrate cost advantages. Many companies currently claiming to produce planetary roller screws for embodied robots actually lack mass production capabilities. At the same time, the company has locked in some leading embodied robot and dexterous hand companies, positioning it at the forefront of commercialization in the industry; the company also has products for industrial equipment and automotive-grade applications, especially automotive-grade applications, which may see significant volume growth. We believe NOUS has strong scarcity in the industry and is quite promising.
SAIC Financial Holdings investment team believes: This additional investment in NOUS is based on our in-depth analysis of the humanoid robot industry and our emphasis on the enormous synergy potential between this field and the automotive industry chain in terms of key component reuse. NOUS has 30 years of solid technical foundation, with a complete product line covering from traditional screws, planetary roller screws to micro actuators, which have been widely applied in high-growth areas such as automotive tailgate struts, drive-by-wire braking, and robot dexterous hands. We believe this investment will strengthen our partnership, jointly capture the window of industry synergy and technology integration, drive accelerated innovation implementation, and achieve long-term mutual success.
