Text/Leon

Editor/cc Sun Congying

At the 2025 Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, a small robot, standing at about 1.2 meters tall, ran vigorously. Unlike other robots, Songyan Robotics' N2 completed the race in second place without any support staff.

Outside the racecourse, a young man wearing a "must win" headband cheered enthusiastically. He was Jiang Zheyuan, founder and chairman of Songyan Robotics, and one of the creators of N2. "We prepared for a month and didn't expect to have both the second and third place finishers," Jiang Zheyuan said excitedly.

Its outstanding performance and stability quickly propelled Songyan Robotics into the spotlight. Capitalizing on this momentum, the young team, composed of academics from Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhejiang University, began to accelerate their commercialization efforts.

On May 11, in Changping, Beijing, Songyan Robotics held an Ecological Strategy Launch Conference themed "Collaborate and Create, Share a Winning Future." As an invited media outlet, "Wall Street Tech Eye" witnessed firsthand the "near future" living scenario where humans and robots coexist. Notably, Songyan Robotics announced at the conference that pre-orders for its robots had surpassed 1,000 units, outlining a relatively clear commercialization goal.

A Tsinghua University academic prodigy born in 1998, Jiang Zheyuan boldly ventured into the robotics sector.

The robotics startup scene is not short of academic prodigies, but few are as all-in as Jiang Zheyuan. Born in 1998, Jiang Zheyuan is only 27 years old. He majored in Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University and later pursued his Ph.D. at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences at Tsinghua University.

Photo: Songyan Robotics N2 and founder Jiang Zheyuan

In 2023, driven by the AIGC industry, the concept of embodied intelligence began to emerge, leading to a wave of young, highly educated entrepreneurs, many of whom were Tsinghua academics. With his professional background, passion, and family support, Jiang Zheyuan decided to drop out of school and start his own business. "My partner (Zhang Shipu, co-founder and CEO of Songyan Robotics) and I asked our parents for some money, and we scraped together almost 1 million yuan. We rented a private house, and at that time, we had nothing, it was very tough," Jiang Zheyuan recalled. In September 2023, Songyan Robotics was officially established.

Jiang Zheyuan's entrepreneurial story has an interesting epilogue. When Jiang Zheyuan decided to drop out of school and start his own business, his mentor felt quite sorry, as the risks were difficult to assess. Therefore, the mentor asked Ma Lin, a Tsinghua alumnus and managing partner of SEE Fund (a fund jointly initiated by the Department of Electronic Engineering of Tsinghua University and Tianjin Electronics Institute), to invite Jiang Zheyuan to dinner for some guidance. However, Ma Lin was impressed and decided to invest after the meal. "He (Jiang Zheyuan) has that kind of drive, combining technical ideals with business acumen. I felt that I had to support this project, otherwise, I would regret it," Ma Lin recalled.

Photo: Ma Lin, managing partner of SEE Fund, representing investors

The entrepreneurial process is undoubtedly arduous, but once the direction and rhythm are found, it becomes unstoppable. Songyan Robotics' team currently consists of about 70 people, with core team members coming from prestigious universities such as Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. They cover various fields such as hardware, algorithms, and motion control, and possess rich practical experience. In Jiang Zheyuan's words, they are a "battle-tested team".

From 2023 to 2024, Songyan Robotics successively developed the bipedal humanoid robot N series and E series, the bionic robot head Hobbs, and the universal humanoid robot Dora, overcoming technical difficulties such as multi-terrain walking and facial expressions with multiple degrees of freedom. In the capital market, Songyan Robotics has also reaped substantial rewards, gaining recognition from well-known investment institutions such as the Beijing Government-Guided Fund and the Beijing Future Science City Fund. Jiang Zheyuan revealed in an interview that Songyan Robotics has raised hundreds of millions of yuan in five rounds of financing to date.

Entering 2025, Songyan Robotics released the motion robot N2 in March, and its stunning demonstration of continuous backflips began to gain online fame. After participating in the marathon, N2's popularity soared, with pre-orders surpassing 1,000 units. This achievement had previously only been achieved by Unitree Robotics, which appeared on the Spring Festival Gala.

Currently, the competition in the humanoid robot sector is fierce. In fact, some robotic unicorns have already fallen into financial distress, with the more famous example being CloudMinds Robotics. Zhu Xiaohu, a partner at GSR Ventures, has also repeatedly expressed pessimism about this market, announcing that he would begin to withdraw from related investments earlier this year.

When talking about this incident, Jiang Zheyuan appeared calm and did not shy away from discussing the bubble in the humanoid robot market, instead offering his own insights and strategies. "Wall Street Tech Eye" summarized them as – development and commercialization in parallel.

Market Deflation: Gold Emerges After the Sand is Blown Away

Jiang Zheyuan admitted that the application of global humanoid robots is temporarily limited and has not yet reached the stage of entering thousands of households. As an emerging industry, the appearance of bubbles is very normal. After the market undergoes the process of winnowing and bubble bursting, it often welcomes a growth curve, which requires enterprises to possess the ability to navigate through cycles, which can be understood as phased commercialization layouts.

Humanoid robots and bionic robots are the two main directions currently pursued by Songyan Robotics, and they also represent Songyan Robotics' thinking on the current stage of humanoid robot applications and the market.

Taking N2 as an example, at the marathon, "Wall Street Tech Eye" noticed that Songyan Robotics N2's "small stature" was somewhat different. Coupled with a pre-sale price of 39,900 yuan for the exhibition-grade version (with a higher price for the research-grade version), compared to competitor robots that are often full-size at over 1.7 meters tall, it inevitably gives people a sense of "cost-cutting".

In response, Jiang Zheyuan told "Wall Street Tech Eye": "We considered this from the perspective of user value. Our main customers currently come from two major industries: education and research, as well as exhibition and display. For these two types of users, full size does not bring any improvement in user value, and product pricing will not increase due to larger size. Additionally, in practical applications, if a full-size robot accidentally falls, it poses potential dangers to the environment and surrounding people."

In fact, N2's configuration is also very mainstream, including 18 degrees of freedom and a peak torque of 150N.m, enabling relatively flexible movements and a maximum walking speed of 3.2m/s. It possesses basic computing power to support large-model voice and visual interaction.

In addition to N2, Songyan Robotics also released a new female image of a bionic robot named "Xiaonuo." Xiaonuo is a product developed based on the bionic robot head Hobbs, but with a more easily accepted female image. Those familiar with bionic robots know that Hiroshi Ishiguro from Japan has made significant achievements in this field, with his bionic robots being lifelike and even starring in a movie in 2015. In comparison, Xiaonuo's skin realism is not inferior, with the difference being that it is only half-body.

According to the official website, Xiaonuo's face and neck have a total of 54 degrees of freedom, allowing for very natural expressions. Jiang Zheyuan explained that it is generally difficult for bionic robots to make a pouting expression, but after Songyan Robotics' efforts, Xiaonuo can naturally pout, adding some life to it. At the same time, Xiaonuo supports customization, allowing it to be either an Eastern beauty or a British gentleman, with one machine having a thousand faces to meet the needs of different user groups.

Whether it's N2 or Xiaonuo, their market positioning is very precise, namely for display, explanation, etc., and can be applied to scenarios such as research, cultural tourism, and education. These scenarios actually have considerable demand, including the rental and retail markets. According to Jiang Zheyuan, the rental market currently accounts for 50%, which is consistent with the booming situation of Unitree Robotics' rentals.

To grow, one must first survive. Humanoid robots need to achieve phased commercialization first, and Songyan Robotics understands this well. Of course, Songyan Robotics also has plans to launch consumer-grade products, but Jiang Zheyuan left a cliffhanger: Perhaps we will announce this consumer-grade product later.

Booming Market: Redundancy and Risks Coexist

Entering May, the popularity of the humanoid robot market has not decreased but increased. "We are severely understaffed," Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Technology, said recently at the 6th Shanghai Forum for Innovative and Entrepreneurial Youth. Furthermore, Wang Xingxing also stated that many humanoid robot companies have received an overwhelming number of orders.

In addition to Songyan Robotics, which has pre-orders exceeding 1,000 units and is increasing production capacity, the head of LEJU Robotics also said in an interview with CCTV Finance that the company's orders have been booked until May or June this year, with each completed robot being delivered directly. Another report stated that "the first stock of robots," UBTech, is also working shifts around the clock. The capital market has also been encouraged, with the A-share humanoid robot sector (BK1184) up about 39% from the beginning of the year as of May 13, and individual stocks such as UBTech (09880.HK) closing up 5.5%.

According to data from the China Humanoid Robot Industry Conference, the size of China's humanoid robot market was approximately 2.76 billion yuan in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 93.6% expected by 2029, potentially increasing the market size to 75 billion yuan. However, the Prospective Industry Research Institute pointed out in its "2025 Blue Book on the Development of China's Humanoid Robot Industry" report that the development of humanoid robots still faces challenges in terms of technology, manufacturing, and maintenance costs, such as the strength of some components, motor operating temperatures, etc. Data collection and generalization also require more time.

In addition, there are also reports that the current enthusiasm for the robot rental market has declined (for details, see: Falling Unitree and the "survival" game of humanoid robots). This poses an immediate challenge for startups that mainly rely on financing. Enterprises need to more flexibly adjust their strategies, including adjusting product selling points and continuous functional upgrades, to cater to market demand.

The road is long and challenging, and humanoid robot enterprises will undoubtedly face more tests in the future. (For details, see: Female engineer creates service robots, loses 800 million yuan in three years, and plans to go public in Hong Kong for self-rescue) On August 8, 2025, the World Robot Conference will be held in Beijing; followed closely by the highly anticipated World Humanoid Robot Games, the world's first comprehensive competitive event organized for humanoid robots, which will be held at the National Stadium and the National Speed Skating Oval from August 15 to 17. Currently, Songyan Robotics and Tiangong Robotics have confirmed their participation and are preparing, while some other companies have received invitations. The spectacle of humanoid robots competing on the same stage will once again unfold.