According to Yingke, Shenzhen Nous Robot Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Nous Robot") recently completed its Angel+ round of financing, exclusively invested by SAIC Capital. This is also SAIC Capital's first investment in upstream core components for humanoid robots. The financing funds will be used to support the mass production of C5-level planetary roller screw products.
"Nous Robot" was founded in July 2023 and evolved from a family business with over 30 years of screw manufacturing experience. The first-generation founder, Professor Xu Genlin, has more than 30 years of theoretical research and production experience in screws. The second-generation founder Xu Yang, co-founder Wang Xiaobin, and the main team all come from Valeo Group. The company focuses on the design, production, and manufacturing of planetary roller screws and supporting actuator modules, has developed the world's smallest planetary roller screw and obtained commercial verification from leading customers, established a R&D center in Shenzhen and a manufacturing base in Shanghai to ensure the production efficiency and quality stability of core components.
Picture: Nous Robot R&D Center (Source/Company)
As a high-end precision transmission component, planetary roller screws have obvious advantages over traditional trapezoidal screws and ball screws in terms of load-carrying capacity and service life. On one hand, they can carry larger loads, providing reliable transmission guarantees for various high-precision, high-load mechanical equipment; on the other hand, their service life far exceeds that of trapezoidal screws and ball screws, effectively reducing equipment maintenance costs and downtime, and improving overall production efficiency.
However, due to the extremely complex grinding process, involving multiple processing steps and strict quality control requirements, from raw material selection to fine operations on the production line, all require professional technology and advanced equipment support. Currently, mass production, low-cost, and miniaturization of planetary roller screws are common "choke point" problems in the global manufacturing industry.
Especially in the field of humanoid robots, dexterous hands have extremely high demand for micro screws, but when entering the mass production stage, they have long faced severe challenges such as high costs and long delivery cycles. High costs have led to a significant increase in the manufacturing cost of humanoid robot complete machines, limiting their application and popularization in the market. At the same time, long delivery cycles will further affect the product development rhythm and market launch speed.
Based on years of technical accumulation, "Nous Robot" has once again broken through the bottleneck of C5-level precision screws on the basis of previous products, developed a new type of the world's smallest planetary roller screw with a screw diameter of 1.5mm and a nut diameter of 5.5mm, which can be easily integrated into the dexterous hands of humanoid robots. While ensuring the accuracy and stability of hand movements, it maintains high precision and high load capacity without adding additional volume and weight, helping to achieve compact and lightweight design of robots.
Picture: World's Smallest Planetary Roller Screw (Source/Company)
On the production side, "Nous Robot" has adopted a unique high-precision metal forming process, achieving stable mass production of planetary roller screws with C5-level precision, which can be widely applied in humanoid robot joints and dexterous hands, semiconductors, lithium battery coating equipment, medical equipment, and industrial machine tools.
Yingke learned that currently "Nous Robot" has secured orders from leading new forces and is accelerating the application and mass delivery in细分领域; at the same time, there is broad cooperation space with SAIC Group in automotive chassis fields such as EMB braking, steering, and suspension. In the future, the company will continue to carry out forward design work of planetary roller screws and actuators, build and master a complete set of production processes, and achieve autonomous production.
Picture: Nous Robot Planetary Roller Screw (Source/Company)
Investor's Perspective:
SAIC Capital Investment Team stated that as high-end precision transmission components, planetary roller screws have performance advantages such as load-carrying capacity and service life that far exceed those of trapezoidal screws or ball screws, but the grinding process is complex, and mass production, low cost, and miniaturization are global choke point problems. Based on 30 years of technical accumulation, Nous Robot has adopted unique processes, broken through the bottleneck of C5-level precision mass production, and has significant price advantages. The company's products can be widely applied in humanoid robot joints and dexterous hands, semiconductors, medical care, lithium batteries and other industries, and have broad cooperation space with SAIC Group in automotive chassis (EMB braking, steering, suspension) fields. SAIC Capital will, as always, firmly implement SAIC Group's technological innovation strategy and requirements of investing early, investing in new technologies, actively promote and implement close collaboration between investment teams, invested enterprises and industries, and help the group's innovation, upgrading and transformation development.