XENSE ROBOTICS (千觉机器人), a leading enterprise in embodied tactile intelligence, has successfully completed its Pre-A round of funding, achiving a total funding amount of over RMB 100 million. This marks the company's third funding round completed within the current year.  This round was led by FT Capital（孚腾资本） (Shanghai Embodied Intelligence Fund 上海具身智能基金). Participating investors included strategic partner Li Auto (理想汽车), alongside notable market-oriented institutions such as BEFOR CAPITAL (彬复资本) and Capital for Science & Industry (科实资本). Existing shareholders, including GL Ventures (高瓴创投), Oriza Ventures (元禾原点), and Gobi Partners (戈壁创投), continued their investment support.

Founded in May 2024 and headquartered in Shanghai, XENSE ROBOTICS is a high-tech enterprise focused on intelligent agent dexterous manipulation, with multimodal tactile sensing technology at its core. The company is dedicated to innovating tactile perception, enabling intelligent agents to understand the real world and advancing embodied intelligence from fine manipulation towards general perception.

In less than a year and a half since its inception, XENSE ROBOTICS has garnered strong confidence and investment from numerous institutions, including GL Ventures, Plug and Play China (璞跃中国), Jiao Tong University Han Yuan Fund (交大菡源基金), Agibot (智元机器人), Oriza Ventures, Gobi Partners, and Xiaomiao Langcheng Capital (小苗朗程). The participation of FT Capital and Li Auto not only reflects the shared recognition of XENSE's prospects by state-backed investment institutions and industrial capital but also significantly aids the company's strategic development, accelerating the deployment and adoption of its tactile sensing technology in real-world industrial scenarios.  Currently, XENSE ROBOTICS's products and solutions have been validated and applied in pioneering scenarios, including embodied dexterous manipulation, industrial precision assembly, tactile inspection, agile logistics, and home intelligent agents. The company's products have received affirmation from leading industry clients and formed close collaborations with partners such as Agibot, X Square Robot (自变量), Li Auto, L'Oréal China, Haier, and Google DeepMind. The new funding will accelerate the company's plans for technological R&D, product iteration, team expansion, and market development, further solidifying XENSE ROBOTICS's leading position in embodied intelligent tactile manipulation and perception.

From an industry and investment perspective, a consensus has formed: tactile sensing is the core factor enabling fine, compliant manipulation and imbuing embodied interactions with a sense of "presence" and "warmth". High-quality tactile data is undoubtedly the "strategic mineral" that determines the performance ceiling of embodied manipulation models. The entire process – from acquiring and processing high-precision, multimodal tactile data to enabling operational control – imposes extremely high demands on a company's comprehensive R&D strength, ability to understand and utilize tactile information, capacity to define and deliver products and solutions, and capability for multimodal fusion. XENSE ROBOTICS possesses precisely these core advantages. Focusing exclusively on the tactile domain, the company has established a complete technological pathway from high-precision multimodal tactile perception systems to intelligent control algorithms, representing a highly scarce capability within the embodied intelligence industry.

Representative from FT Capital

"Physical intelligence represents the frontier and the most anticipated challenge in AI development, determining whether AI can truly enter the physical world. Therefore, data and intelligence for physical interaction are the key cornerstones of physical intelligence. XENSE ROBOTICS, with its core visuotactile perception technology, is dedicated to overcoming the challenges of perceiving and understanding physical interaction. It is currently the only company in the market capable of providing solutions that surpass the sensing capabilities of the human finger. Its multimodal, high-resolution, high-precision tactile perception enables robots to achieve precise and compliant control, allowing intelligent agents to interact autonomously and safely with humans, environments, machines, and other forms of life. Embodied intelligence is a key strategic direction for Shanghai. As a local Shanghai innovator starting from industrial embodiment, XENSE ROBOTICS provides core tactile perception and control modules for the embodied intelligence and humanoid robotics industries, developing a core technological system for comprehensive physical interaction of intelligent agents. Its clear and pragmatic path to technology commercialization gives us strong confidence in its future prospects."

Chen Yu, Founding Partner, BEFOR CAPITAL

"The deployment of embodied intelligence requires robots to physically interact with the real world, where the scarce tactile modality provides a crucial new dimension for perception. Visuotactile solutions are currently the only tactile approach that can offer a greater number of tactile sensing units than the human finger, providing more accurate detail on physical properties such as hardness, texture, slip, and contact sensation. Although large-scale industrial deployment is currently limited by lifespan and cost issues, we see the technological breakthroughs and engineering deployment explorations made by the XENSE ROBOTICS team, led by Professor Ma, in the visuotactile field. We are confident and optimistic about the widespread adoption of visuotactile solutions."

Wang Guanda, General Manager of Beijing Operations Center, Capital for Science & Industry

"Tactile perception capability directly impacts the effectiveness of interaction between the model world and the physical world and is one of the key technological bottlenecks for implementing embodied intelligence scenarios. XENSE ROBOTICS, based on its visuotactile sensors, can provide multimodal, high-precision physical information about contact surfaces, such as 3D force field distribution and tactile images, meeting diverse client needs ranging from motion control to model training. The company's founder was a core member of the pioneering MIT team internationally researching the combined application of tactile sensing and fine robotic control; his theoretical research on external contact perception has been recognized at top international conferences. The company has now completed the R&D of a series of visuotactile sensors compatible with various end-effector forms. It holds significant potential to break through current technological application limitations in multiple scenarios, representing a vast potential market."

Project Lead, GL Ventures

"Embodied intelligence is the critical pathway for AI to move from the virtual to the physical world, and high-precision tactile sensing is the core enabler for robots to achieve fine, compliant manipulation. The XENSE ROBOTICS team represents top-tier strength in this field, having successfully established a complete technological pathway from high-precision multimodal visuotactile systems to intelligent control algorithms, possessing highly scarce technical value. As the lead investor in XENSE ROBOTICS's Angel round, we continue to be confident in the team's technical prowess and engineering execution capabilities. We believe XENSE ROBOTICS will accelerate the integration of cutting-edge tactile perception capabilities into industrial manufacturing and next-generation intelligent agents, leading to further breakthroughs in embodied intelligence."

Representative, Oriza Ventures

"The ultimate goal of embodied intelligence is to achieve human-level precision manipulation and real-time interaction, and high-precision tactile sensing is key to realizing this leap. Currently, due to complex application scenarios and extremely high technical requirements, obtaining stable and reliable tactile information and achieving complex, fine manipulation remain core industry challenges. Advanced tactile sensing technologies and solutions represent critical 'bottleneck technologies' urgently needing breakthroughs within China's embodied intelligence field. In this context, XENSE ROBOTICS, as a domestic pioneer in visuotactile perception technology, has successfully transitioned its technology from lab to product and is accelerating its commercialization. With the rapid development of the embodied intelligence industry, we believe that, leveraging its full-chain tactile technology accumulation and industry-leading product capabilities, XENSE ROBOTICS holds very broad market prospects."

Representative, Gobi Partners

"Tactile perception is the cornerstone of robot interaction with the physical world. The technology's maturity is still at an early stage, indicating immense development potential. XENSE ROBOTICS has achieved several key technological breakthroughs in the multimodal tactile perception field, and its commercial progress is also leading in the market. We believe that, with its experienced R&D team and profound technical expertise, XENSE ROBOTICS will continue to lead technological innovation in the field of tactile perception, driving the progress and development of the embodied intelligence industry."

"Enabling robots to perceive the physical world" – Innovative enterprises like XENSE ROBOTICS are steadily turning this vision into reality.