Chinese robotics startup Galaxy General Robot Co. – also known as Galbot – has raised $151 million in a funding round led by battery giant CATL and Puquan Capital, bringing its total investment to more than $330 million since its founding in 2023.
The company also announced a strategic joint venture with Boyuan Capital, the investment arm of Bosch Group, to accelerate the global commercialization of embodied AI robots.
Founded by Professor He Wang of Peking University – a Stanford-trained scientist – Galbot specializes in embodied artificial intelligence, which enables robots to perceive and interact with the physical world in a more human-like manner. The company’s technology has applications in retail, automotive, and industrial sectors.
Additional investors in the latest round include the China Development Bank, its Science and Technology Innovation Fund, the Beijing Robot Industry Fund, and Qiming Venture Partners.
Galbot described the funding as part of a broader national strategy to develop embodied intelligence as a core capability for China’s future industrial competitiveness.
Breakthroughs in generalizable robot learning
Galbot’s momentum is driven by a series of technical breakthroughs, most notably its GraspVLA model – launched in January 2025 – which it describes as the world’s first end-to-end embodied AI model trained on billions of simulated physical interactions.
The company claims GraspVLA enables “zero-shot learning”, allowing robots to generalize to new tasks without additional training.
In the retail sector, Galbot’s GroceryVLA model enables robots to manipulate a wide variety of items – such as fragile jars or soft packaging – without reprogramming. The system adapts to unpredictable, cluttered environments in real time.
In a November 2024 feature, Nvidia highlighted Galbot’s use of Nvidia Isaac Sim for training simulations and its development of DexGraspNet, a dataset comprising over 1.3 million grasps by a ShadowHand on more than 5,000 different objects.
The company’s dual-arm wheeled robot, Galbot G1, is currently being tested in unmanned convenience stores across Beijing. Each unit is capable of managing inventory, restocking shelves, and handling packaging tasks autonomously.
Galbot says a single robot can operate a 50-square-meter store, with deployment taking less than a day. Ten pilot locations are already operational, and the company plans to expand to 100 stores by the end of the year.
Strategic partnership with Bosch’s Boyuan Capital
On June 17, Galbot signed a three-way cooperation agreement with Bosch China and Boyuan Capital to form a new joint venture called the Boyin Innovation Alliance. The venture will focus on developing embodied AI robots for industrial use, particularly in the automotive and manufacturing sectors.
Dr Ingo Ramesohl, managing partner at Bosch Ventures, says: “Embodied AI holds transformative potential to redefine manufacturing processes.
“Through this powerful synergy between Boyuan Capital and Galbot, we anticipate delivering commercially viable, scalable robotics solutions with real industry impact.”
Galbot also introduced a new navigation model, TrackVLA, capable of visually tracking people or pets in complex environments using voice commands and onboard perception alone. The system can resume tracking after temporary visual loss, a key feature for dynamic settings like hospitals, malls, or airports.
The company’s development strategy integrates simulation-based motor learning with real-world data fine-tuning, enabling rapid adaptation and more stable robot behavior in unstructured environments.
Professor He Wang says: “The future of manufacturing lies in intelligent, adaptive systems that can learn from real-world data.
“Through our collaboration with Bosch and Boyuan Capital, we’re building a global value chain for embodied AI systems that can transform smart manufacturing.”
