Ant Group Backs Zeroth in Latest Humanoid Robot Deal, Extending an 18-Month Push That Spans Investments, a Subsidiary and a Joint Venture

Overview

Ant Group, the financial-technology affiliate of Alibaba, has spent the past year and a half assembling a wide-ranging position in China’s humanoid robotics sector, combining direct equity investments with an in-house robotics unit and a joint venture. The company first ventured into the sector “according to a company statement and job postings,” as South China Morning Post reported, establishing a dedicated subsidiary and recruiting engineers before moving into startup financing and partnerships.

The latest step, reported by CNBC, is a 500 million yuan (about $73.58 million) funding round that Ant led in the humanoid robotics startup Zeroth. CNBC described it as the 12th company Ant has invested in within the sector since the beginning of 2025.

What We Know

The in-house subsidiary

Ant’s first move was to build a robotics arm of its own. According to TechNode, Shanghai Ant Lingbo Technology was “founded in December 2024 with a registered capital of RMB 100 million ($13.73 million),” and Ant began recruiting for embodied-intelligence humanoid robot roles with annual salaries reaching up to RMB 1 million ($137,300). TechNode noted that in doing so, “Ant Group is joining other major Chinese tech companies such as Baidu, Tencent, Huawei, and JD.com in investing heavily in robotics and AI.”

South China Morning Post reported the same subsidiary under the name Shanghai Mayi Lingbo Technology, launched on December 17 with 100 million yuan (US$13.7 million) in registered capital and focused on “research and development of embodied-intelligence technology and products.”

That unit, known by the brand Robbyant, later produced Ant’s first humanoid. As South China Morning Post reported, Ant Lingbo Technology unveiled a robot called R1 on September 11, 2025, at the Inclusion Conference on the Bund in Shanghai. The publication said R1 “could operate as a chef or tour guide, or perform remote-controlled tasks,” and that units were already in mass production and had been shipped to clients including the Shanghai History Museum. The company frames its robots as bundled “scenario solutions” rather than standalone products, according to the same report.

The joint venture

Ant also entered a partnership with one of China’s better-known robot makers. According to TechNode, a joint venture named Hangzhou Chuanzhi Future Technology Co., Ltd. was established on November 11, 2025, with RMB 20 million ($2.75 million) in registered capital. TechNode reported it is “jointly owned by Zhiyuan Innovation (an affiliate of AgiBot), Shanghai Yunyang (a wholly owned subsidiary of Ant Group), Transfar Zhilian, and the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center,” with a business scope covering AI software and intelligent robot research and development. The stated aim is to “integrate resources from logistics, fintech, and robotics technologies to accelerate the application of AI technologies in industrial manufacturing and service scenarios.”

The equity investments

Alongside the subsidiary and joint venture, Ant has been backing outside startups. Earlier in 2026 it led an angel round for ACE Robotics, a SenseTime-backed startup, in a deal that also drew “Qiming Venture Partners, GVC, Hony Capital, Lenovo Capital, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Lotus Capital,” with Sense Capital increasing its investment, according to TechNode.

The Zeroth round is the most recent of these deals. Per CNBC, Zeroth Robotics, known in China as Suzhou JoyIn Intelligent Technology, was founded in late 2024 and plans a phased approach to home humanoids, starting with companionship robots for elderly care and pet care and later robots for children’s education. CNBC reported that Zeroth claimed orders for more than 30,000 units, that operating revenue in the first half of the year surged 600% from a year earlier, and that the company plans to start overseas sales in North America and Europe this fall once it clears local compliance requirements. Other investors in the round, according to CNBC, included Monolith, Geely Capital, 37 Interactive Entertainment and Hua Capital.

What We Don’t Know

Ant has not published a consolidated list of every robotics company it has backed, so the specific membership of the “12 companies” tally reported by CNBC is not fully enumerated in the cited sources. The financial terms and ownership stakes for most of Ant’s individual robotics deals have not been disclosed. Zeroth’s order figures and revenue growth are company claims relayed by CNBC rather than independently audited results, and its overseas launch remains contingent on regulatory clearance in each market. The two spellings of Ant’s robotics subsidiary — Shanghai Ant Lingbo Technology and Shanghai Mayi Lingbo Technology — reflect different transliterations of the same Chinese name across the cited outlets.

Analysis

Ant’s strategy reads less as a bet on a single winner and more as an attempt to sit across several layers of the humanoid stack at once: an internal product line through Robbyant, a manufacturing-and-service joint venture with AgiBot, and minority stakes in a spread of startups. That pattern mirrors a broader race among Chinese technology giants; TechNode placed Ant alongside Baidu, Tencent, Huawei and JD.com among firms “investing heavily in robotics and AI.” Whether that portfolio approach yields a durable advantage will depend on which of these ventures can move from pilots and demonstrations to sustained commercial deployment.