Chinese embodied-AI funding has been running hot for a year, mostly into robot hardware. Motion Brain (眸深智能) is a datapoint from the other side of the stack: it builds the on-device foundation model that runs on the robot rather than the robot itself, and it disclosed on July 26 an additional Pre-A tranche of close to 100 million yuan — roughly $15 million.

The numbers, in the units the company used

The company reports 30 million yuan in the first half of 2026, against a figure it describes as “tens of millions of yuan” for the whole of 2025. It says its valuation has grown more than tenfold since the start of this year. The named investors in this tranche are Jinyue Investment, Chuanghehui Capital and Xuhui Capital. The founding team pairs Chen Tao, a Fudan University professor, with Zhang Yimin, formerly chief scientist at Intel China; Mu Zelin is chief executive.

Two things the figures are not

First, the round. This is a top-up to the Pre-A the company closed in May at 300 million yuan — not a new round, and notably smaller than the roughly 500 million yuan Pre-A+ the company says is still in closing. Written up carelessly it becomes “raises 500 million yuan,” which is a different and unclosed transaction. Second, the revenue. The Chinese original describes the figures as cash collected (回款), not booked revenue — a stricter measure than the one Western coverage usually implies, and one worth stating rather than converting silently. The 2025 comparison is also a scale in Chinese usage, not a precise number; machine translations render it as a flat “10 million yuan,” which it is not.

Where the money is going

The interesting part is not the size of the cheque but its destination. Capital in Chinese embodied AI has been flowing to companies building humanoids; this is money going to the model that sits inside one. A tenfold valuation move in six months on a revenue base this small is priced on that positioning rather than on the financials.

What cannot be checked

All of it rests on a single outlet’s reporting. There is no company filing, no investor confirmation and no audited statement behind the revenue or the valuation multiple — the figures are the company’s own, relayed by a reporter, and should be read that way.