Starry Era Completes Nearly 500 Million Yuan Series A+ Funding! Breakthroughs in General Embodied Technology Drive Commercialization, Mass Product Delivery to Global Tech Giants}

On July 7, 2025, Starry Era announced the completion of nearly 500 million yuan in Series A+ funding. The round was led by Dinghui VGC and Haier Capital, with participation from well-known financial and industrial investors such as Houxue Capital, Huaying Capital, Xianghe Capital, and Fengli Intelligent. Existing shareholders Qingliu Capital and Qingkong Fund also increased their investments. Huaxing Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be used for R&D and mass production of humanoid robot hardware and software, driving the high-speed cycle of the “model-body-scene data” closed loop.

Founded in August 2023, Starry Era is the only embodied intelligence company owned by Tsinghua University. Since inception, it has adhered to an integrated hardware-software approach, aiming to create general intelligent agents in the physical world, delivering universal productivity, and empowering industries and households.

Building a Human-Centered Physical World

Starry Era starts from first principles, striving to enable robots to “see, understand, learn quickly, and do more” in the physical world:

• On the model side: Proposes the ERA-42 VLA model, integrating visual perception, understanding, prediction, and action into an end-to-end system, allowing robots to “see and act like humans.”
• On the body side: Develops “powerful and flexible human-like bodies,” with performance close to humans, serving as universal interfaces for physical interaction, expanding data from real machines to internet videos, solving data scarcity issues.

The breakthroughs in model and hardware development have enabled Starry Era to control full-body dexterous operations, creating a true closed-loop physical AI system. The ERA-42 model can perform over a hundred complex tasks, such as flexible sorting, scanning, using screwdrivers, and pipetting, with voice commands.

【Hardware Breakthroughs】

Creating a Human-Like Powerful & Flexible Body

• Form determines data scale: Using human data to solve data scarcity, with humanoid robots as “universal interfaces” to physical interaction, expanding from real machine data to vast internet video data.
• Performance determines scene limits: The STAR1 robot can run at 3.6 m/s, breaking global speed records; with 55 degrees of freedom and the flexible XHAND1, it can perform thousands of dexterous actions, lifting up to 24 kg with one hand. It adapts to indoor and outdoor environments and complex industrial scenarios, recognized as one of the top humanoid robots globally in 2025 by NVIDIA and Morgan Stanley.
• Hardware modularization: Self-developed core components, including joints, dexterous hands, motors, reducers, and controllers, ensuring supply chain stability and high-quality delivery.

To meet diverse scene needs, Starry Era can build cost-effective, high-performance robots with various forms. The newly launched wheel-based humanoid robot Q5 shares most core components with STAR1.

【Commercialization】

Mass Product Delivery to Global Tech Giants

Leading Deployment in Logistics and Retail

The company's innovative technology has achieved rapid commercial growth:

• Delivered over 200 units this year, with hundreds more in mass production.
• 9 of the top 10 global market-cap tech giants are Starry Era clients. Its products are the first choice for developers worldwide, supporting top research institutions like MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and ByteDance Robotics Lab, promoting tech transfer from labs to applications.
• Rapidly expanding overseas markets, with over 50% of revenue from international clients since early this year.
• Focusing on high-value industries like logistics and retail, collaborating with Beizhi Technology to explore humanoid robots in complex industrial logistics, and partnering with Haier Smart Home, Lenovo, and Century Golden Source to reshape retail service experiences.

Starry Era will continue to advance its “brave exploration into the unknown” with a focus on empowering industries and improving human life, making robots key drivers of technological progress and productivity across sectors.