Two Alumni from Harbin Institute of Technology Achieve IPO Milestone.

According to Corporate Early Warning, Wo'an Robotics, founded by Harbin Institute of Technology alumni Li Zhichen and Pan Yang, has officially submitted an application for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Upon successful listing, it will become the "first stock of AI embodied robots."

Amidst the global aging trend, the demand for home services has surged. Instead of pursuing a humanoid appearance, Wo'an Robotics integrates AI into homes, making it an "invisible butler."

Its flagship product is the "AI Embodied Home Robot System," which mimics human limb movements and sensory capabilities, endowing home devices such as door locks, curtains, and vacuum cleaners with autonomous decision-making abilities. For instance, the curtain robot automatically adjusts its opening and closing based on light intensity, while the fingerprint door lock dynamically learns user habits and provides anomaly alerts.

According to Frost & Sullivan's report, Wo'an is poised to become the global leader in AI embodied home robots with a market share of 11.9% by 2024. In the Japanese market, it has ranked first in sales for three consecutive years.

Supporting Wo'an are not only "DJI Godfather" Li Zexiang but also top investment firms such as Hillhouse Capital, Source Code Capital, and Fortune Capital.

After several funding rounds, Wo'an Robotics' valuation has soared, from 20 million yuan in the angel round to 4.048 billion yuan after the C round.

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Technical Partners from Harbin Institute of Technology

Li Zhichen and Pan Yang graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology with bachelor's degrees in 2011, majoring in Telecommunications and Electronic Science and Technology, respectively.

In 2015, they founded Wo'an Robotics. Amidst the nascent wave of smart home appliances, they spent 18 months developing the world's first finger robot, SwitchBot—a 35-gram device that precisely simulates human finger pressing with an error margin of less than 0.1 millimeters, instantly transforming old appliances into smart ones and addressing the connectivity issue of existing home appliances.

However, their entrepreneurial journey was not without challenges. In 2018, Wo'an Robotics hit a roadblock. Despite SwitchBot's impressive technology, market response fell short, and financing progress faced hurdles.

A turning point came when "DJI Godfather" and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor Li Zexiang, through entities like the Songshan Lake Robotics Research Institute he founded, extended support to Wo'an, investing and personally serving as a non-executive director.

Li Zexiang values not short-term gains but the team's solid technical foundation, resilience in research and development (three months for 0.1 millimeter accuracy), and pragmatic approach (avoiding the humanoid robot bubble, focusing on distributed scenario-based products).

With the support of supply chain resources at the Songshan Lake base, Wo'an successfully accessed Amazon's global channels.

Subsequently, top investment firms such as Hillhouse Capital, Source Code Capital, and Fortune Capital invested heavily, catapulting the company's valuation from about 20 million yuan in the angel round to 4.048 billion yuan after the C round, a 25-fold increase in three years. Hillhouse Capital explicitly stated during its multiple rounds of shareholding increases: "Wo'an has proven that robots don't have to be humanoid to make money."

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Addressing Aging Demands

With capital support and relentless team efforts, Wo'an Robotics achieved a key market breakthrough.

In 2019, they turned their focus to overseas markets, pioneering a smart curtain robot called SwitchBot Curtain in Japan.

This seemingly simple product embodies a deep understanding and ingenious design addressing user pain points. Unlike traditional electric curtains requiring track dismantling, wiring, and complex modifications, SwitchBot Curtain introduced the "post-installation hardware" mode.

Users simply clip the magnetic robot into the original curtain track, completing installation within ten minutes and enabling remote control functionality.

This revolutionary design reduces replacement costs for users to nearly zero, solving the intelligent transformation issue for a large number of old residential buildings and rental apartments in Japan.

Product validation was completed through the overseas crowdfunding platform Kickstarter in 2020. In just 30 days, SwitchBot Curtain raised $678,000, surpassing the target amount by 3394%, becoming the biggest dark horse in the home category on the platform that year.

Japanese media hailed it as the "intelligent savior of rental apartments," and the first batch of 20,000 products sold out quickly.

Japan faces severe aging challenges, with an aging rate exceeding 28%. Elderly people living alone urgently need "no-modification, easy-to-use" smart home solutions.

Using the curtain robot as a pivot, Wo'an quickly launched a series of derivative combinations suitable for elderly care scenarios: fall detection sensors linked to alarm systems, voice-controlled door lock robots solving the issue of forgotten keys, and light robots automatically adjusting lighting based on circadian rhythm.

These functional combinations formed dedicated "elderly care packages" in mainstream retail channels such as Rakuten and Yodobashi Camera in Japan, and they were even included in local government subsidy lists for aging-friendly transformations.

Demanding Japanese consumers recognized Wo'an through repurchase rates. In 2022, its product repurchase rate reached 37%, pushing Wo'an's retail share in the Japanese home robot market from 7% to 24%, surpassing local giants like Panasonic and Toshiba, and ranking first in retail sales for three consecutive years.

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From a Single Best-Seller to a Home Service Ecosystem

After successfully opening the market with a single best-seller, Wo'an Robotics quickly shifted its strategic focus to building ecosystem stickiness to lock in users and enhance value.

In 2021, they launched the core SwitchBot Hub intelligent central unit. This central device connects various robots, such as curtains, door locks, and lights, that originally worked independently into an efficient and coordinated network through a low-latency communication protocol (response speed <50 milliseconds).

Users need only a simple voice command (like "Good morning"), and the system automatically triggers a series of chained actions: curtains opening, coffee machines starting, security systems being disarmed, etc.

They created a business closed loop of "entry product drainage - central control retention - scenario expansion and revenue increase," enhancing user stickiness and average order value, which significantly increased from an early average of about 200 yuan to 980 yuan in 2024.

As of June 2025, its proprietary App has connected over 9.1 million devices, and users have autonomously created over 860,000 device linkage scenario plans.

The successful model in the Japanese market was replicated in European communities with pronounced aging characteristics, also achieving significant results, driving a 68% increase in Wo'an's revenue in the European market over three years.

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Behind the Leap in Profitability

The maturity of the business model has also rewritten Wo'an Robotics' financial trajectory.

Its revenue climbed from 275 million yuan in 2022 to 610 million yuan in 2024, with a three-year compound annual growth rate approaching 50%. Its gross profit margin significantly increased from 34.3% in 2022 to 51.7% in 2024, far exceeding the industry average.

The leap in profitability is mainly due to the strategic expansion of the DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) channel. By vigorously developing self-operated websites and direct sales on e-commerce platforms, this portion of revenue increased from 36.9% to 49.8%, effectively reducing dependence on third-party platforms and retaining a larger profit margin.

Simultaneously, Wo'an Robotics' loss situation significantly improved, rapidly narrowing from 87 million yuan to 3.07 million yuan in 2024. Its adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) turned positive for the first time in 2023 and further jumped to 26.1 million yuan in 2024, approaching the profitability inflection point.

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The Real Engine of Market Growth

The global AI embodied home robot market is expanding at an astonishing rate. The global scale has jumped from 213.3 billion yuan in 2022 to approximately 257.7 billion yuan in 2024, and it is expected to exceed 287.3 billion yuan in 2025, with an annual growth rate of over 11%.

This growth is primarily driven by rigid demand in home scenarios such as cleaning, companionship, and elderly care.

Policy support is also increasing. For instance, China's "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robot Industry" lists home service robots as a key development area, aiming to break through core technologies and establish a robust innovation system by 2025.

The current market presents a pattern of "oligopoly domination and new forces breaking through."

In the Chinese market, first-tier brands like Ecovacs, Xiaomi, and Roborock collectively account for over 76% of the share (with Ecovacs alone accounting for 40%); the global market is controlled by leading enterprises such as iRobot and Ecovacs, with the top five accounting for about 43% of the market share.

However, emerging enterprises are seeking breakthroughs through differentiated paths.

Wo'an Robotics is a typical representative. Its strategy of focusing on overseas markets (especially Japan) and its unique AI embodied system has made it the top market share holder in Japan.

In terms of product form, market trends also indicate that humanoid robots are not the mainstream. Wheeled chassis and modular designs (like Wo'an's "finger robots") are preferred due to their lower costs and easier integration into existing home environments.

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Challenges and Opportunities Facing the Future

Despite broad prospects, the large-scale popularization of home service robots still faces two key "landing thresholds":

First, insufficient technological generalization ability. The complexity of home environments and the diversity of user needs far exceed structured industrial environments, requiring robots to have strong environmental adaptability and task flexibility.

Second, the price threshold is still high. Some high-end models (like the Unitree G1 humanoid robot) have a price of nearly 100,000 yuan, greatly inhibiting the speed of penetration into the consumer market.

However, breakthroughs have emerged in multiple sub-sectors.

In the field of elderly care and health, exoskeleton robots are assisting stroke patients in rehabilitation, and the market for wearable health monitoring devices is growing at an annual rate of 20%. Emotional companionship needs have given rise to products like social robot dogs ("Xiaotian"), becoming the "cyber companions" of more and more young people, with related topics easily exceeding 100 million views on social media.

From a technological evolution perspective, in the next 3-5 years, home robots will gradually expand from performing single tasks (like continuous upgrades in sweeping functions) to more advanced tasks such as folding clothes and complex security operations.

In short, home robots are shedding the label of "expensive toys" and accelerating their transition from "a few geeks trying something new" to "a rigid demand for ordinary families," driven by the dual forces of practical functional value (solving specific life problems) and emotional value (companionship and care).

The key to achieving this popularization lies in effectively balancing continuous technological iteration to reduce costs and deep cultivation of vertical and segmented scenarios.

This article does not constitute any investment advice. This article also refers to content from Lieyun Select, Lanjing News, EMBA Microfinance, Corporate Early Warning, etc., and thanks are extended to them. Images are sourced from AI images.