Not only pay money,but also contribute labor.

Author : CAO Weiyu
Source : Chinaventure

"Queen of Venture capital "XU Xin makes another investment in a robot company.

Chinaventure has learned that Huzhou Leapting Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Leapting"or the“Company” >) has completed a Pre-B round financing of more than RMB 100 million. The joint investment was made by Capital Today, Glory Ventures and Longcapital. Among them, Capital Today has been identified as a strategic shareholder by the Company, and Glory Ventures has made four consecutive investments.

It is understood that the window period for this round of financing was extremely short, with investors completing engagement with, research on and investment in the Company in less than two months.

This investee is not the owner of the most capital-intensive humanoid body, but of a photovoltaic (PV) intelligent robot - Leapting, founded in 2022, mainly providing cleaning, installation, inspection and other solutions for the PV power station scenario.

The swift move of investors is backed by an impending inflection point for commercialization. In 2025, Leapting achieved intensive commercialization implementation, with orders covering major global PV markets including Australia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, South Africa, etc. After completing "0 to 1", the Company aims to reach "1 to 100" by 2026.

Since its establishment, Leapting has seen its stocks in a downtrend, raising funds at a pace of one round per year by making rapid, incremental progress. Leapting's angel round came from TheLinhuiFund, while its Series A and Series A+rounds were dominated by Glory Ventures and Vision+Capital. In addition to financial investors, PV industry leaders such as Canadian Solar Inc., Suzhou Maxwell Technologies Co., Ltd. and Hoymiles Power Electronics Inc. are also among the investors, with a high concentration in the PV industry.

It is notable that Leapting is the only robot company in which XU Xin is a strategic shareholder, meaning that XU Xin is not only providing funds but also getting more involved in the Company's development.

According to public information, XU Xin has invested in five robot companies. As early as 2021, Capital Today was a co-lead investor in the Series C round of Gaussian Robotics specializing in commercial cleaning robots. In the same year, it led the Series B round of Hai Robotics specializing in warehouse logistics robots. In 2023, it led the Series B+round of XYZ Robotics specializing in industrial 3D vision robots. XYZ Robotics completed its Series B+financing round last month, for which Capital Today remained the lead investor.

XU Xin invested in two robot companies in a row at an earlier stage last year. In March 2025, Capital Today co-led Vita Dynamics'Seed +round. In July 2025, it led Galaxea Dynamics's A4 round and continued to increase its investment in the A5 round.

It's not hard to see that XU Xin is very bold in making investment in robot companies, mostly a lead investor, and her preferences are very clear -having a definite ability to implement scenarios such as commercial cleaning, warehousing and logistics, and manufacturing. In humanoid robot sector, where capital is more concentrated but commercialization is still being explored, she has only invested in Galaxea Dynamics for the time being.

The case of Leapting is also very typical. If you keep a close eye on a company's financing press release, you will find that investor comments are mostly correct and decent but lack information. XU Xin, on the contrary, often writes informative comments with stories, without formality or pitch. This time is no exception. Examples of the original text are as follows :

"Five years ago we started investing in companies engaged in robots (cleaning, moving, warehousing, loading and unloading, etc.) , and they have clearly crossed the chasm and entered a period of rapid growth since last year. Today's robots can't compete with humans in efficiency, but they are good at doing dirty, tiring and hard work for humans. An aging population combined with high labor costs makes customers more willing to pay : a deal can be made as long as the total cost does not exceed two to three times that of the human being replaced.

So we've been seeking scenarios where the market is big enough and the pain points are painful enough. It was an impressive experience when we met WANG Shitao, Founder of Leapting, for the first time : he sent robots to do 'hellish'work - installing PV panels in the desert. The client said that in a high-temperature working environment at 45 degrees Celsius without water and power supply, 7,000 people would be working at peak hours from 5 a.m.to 12 p.m. and from 3 p. m. to 6 p. m., and would evacuate when a sandstorm came; food, accommodation, transportation and visa safety were so burdensome that they were in a hurry to replace humans with robots. AI is most lacking in energy, and PV is the main driver of growth, but the PV panel installation is stuck for the core reason that 'the site conditions are too arduous, and nobody wants to work on site'.

Leapting is the pioneer of the category of PV installation robots and has hit through this hard pain point; Mr. Wang, the founder, knows about PVs and the outdoors, is particularly hardworking and has lived in the desert for months. He has a very accurate grasp of users' pain points. We are confident that Leapting will become the leading brand of PV installation robots and accelerate the large-scale application of PV power generation. "

In just three paragraphs, the investment ideas, scenario pain points, company business, founder qualities and expectations are presented clearly with different levels of information granules.

There is also an important but easily overlooked statement : "AI is most lacking in energy, and PV is the main driver of growth.". Just a few words point to another major benefit for companies in the AI era.

In the midst of the AI boom, the importance of energy, especially electricity, is becoming more prominent, and topics like Token going global have been very hot recently. In a recent article, Jensen Huang broke down the AI industry into a concrete five-layer architecture, one of which was energy. He defined energy as "the fundamental prerequisite for AI infrastructure and the core constraint that determines the upper limit of the system's intelligent output. "

According to this logic, Leapting has a good momentum in positioning its ecosystem. In the last two years, mature markets such as China, Europe and the United States (U.S.) have relatively slowed down, while new markets such as the Middle East, Africa and Latin America are experiencing rapid growth in PV power station installations. The huge power demand of the AI industry is likely to further boost the volume.

Precise insights into vertical scenarios are often the result of years of strong presence. WANG Shitao, Founder of Leapting, is a veteran in the PV industry with nearly two decades of experience. He graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology with a Bachelor's Degree in Information and Control Engineering and a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Control Science and Engineering. He has been engaged in research and development (R&D) work in mainstream PV companies. Before founding Leapting, WANG Shitao was the CTO of Arctech, a leading PV mounting system company.

After more than two decades of rapid development, China's trillion-yuan PV industry is very mature in technology R&D, production and manufacturing, market and other links, and giants have emerged in every chain. In a huge, mature and even highly competitive industry, increments often come from innovative segments. PV power stations are often built in "no man's land"far from residential areas, where the environment is harsh. WANG Shitao, who has a background in R&D, has keenly perceived an old pain point that can be addressed by new means - the replacement of human labor for PV installation.

After three years of development, Leapting has gained a certain first-mover advantage. On the one hand, over the past year, it has completed commercial validation intensively and secured GW-level installation orders, and its business footprint has covered major global PV markets including Australia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, South Africa, etc. On the other hand, Leapting's products have been recognized by the national team. In January this year, dozens of Leapting's PV installation machines were used for the automatic installation of PV modules in a1. 5GW-class PV installation project in the United Arab Emirates, which was undertaken by PowerChina.

Leapting represents another typical example among an array of re-hot robot companies. The current mainstream embodiment is a humanoid or humanoid figure that uses technology to find scenarios. The technological paths such as ontology, cerebellum, and data acquisition are far from converged, and it is believed that the future is "full of endless possibilities ". Leapting, on the contrary, starts from a very vertical pain point and always focuses on specific scenarios to solve specific problems. Implementation is the top priority. In the founder's own words, it means a "company that runs on the ground. "

Of course, there is no right or wrong in business.

At the time of financing, we had an exclusive conversation with WANG Shitao about the other side of the robot.

Chinaventure : China is the world's largest PV country, but has experienced multiple rounds of overcapacity, the worst of which occurred in 2023-2024. How does Leapting, which manufactures robots for PV cleaning, installation, etc., view the impact of capacity rotation on the Company's development?

WANG Shitao : The PV industry has experienced many ups and downs, which I summarize as" four rises and four falls". Each time, capacity occurs first, so many products can't be sold, naturally problems arise; and the better the industry, the more likely it is to have overcapacity.

Every time an attempt is made to solve a problem, the final conclusion is only one way, which is to expand the demand. What is the essence of expanding demand? Enhance cost performance. So demand must be addressed while capacity is being invested. If we can reduce the cost of building PV power stations through robots, the market demand will increase, and it will actually help the PV industry get out of the predicament and contribute a little, though small.

Chinaventure : Talks about market ceiling are preferred in respect of the primary market. How big is the PV installation market where Leapting is located?

WANG Shitao : The entire PV industry is about trillion-yuan in scale. I think it can become several trillion-yuan in scale through efforts. The proportion of PV installations is currently around 10 to 20% and may increase in the future, but this is a dynamic process.

Chinaventure : After the explosion of large model applications, the demand for computing power, especially the consumption of computing power by Chinese AI companies, has risen sharply. Musk previously said that in the race of AI between China and the U.S., it's probably China that won because China had more abundant electricity. As one of the energy categories, how much will PV contribute in the future? Where could the bottleneck be?

WANG Shitao : From two perspectives, in simple logic itself, the more data analysis there is, the more energy is needed. PV is the cheapest, so the usage will definitely increase a lot.

Another important point that you may not have noticed is that building a power grid for power transmission is required for originally building a PV power station, but now data centers are different. They can be built directly next to PV power stations without the need for energy transmission. What is needed is to send the calculation results back via optical fiber at an extremely low transmission cost. That's the logic of "East Data, West Computing".

This is a huge boost for the PV industry. Our project has a similar example, where the data center is built right next to the PV power station.

Chinaventure : In the past two years, especially since the beginning of the year, the financing of embodied intelligence has been extremely hot. In contrast, Leapting has been rather restrained in financing. Why not consider taking advantage of the situation to raise large amounts of money?

WANG Shitao : Actually, there are quite a few rounds of financing. There are moves every year about raising tens of millions or even hundreds of millions yuan. I would like to emphasize that Leapting is a "company that runs on the ground" and is going to do concrete things in a down-toearth attitude.

What we aim to achieve is actually in the same broad category as embodied intelligence that people talk about now. One important difference is that most embodied intelligence scenarios are indoors, so the emphasis is put on humanoid or humanoid figures that generally do not heavy physical labor, and require very strong means of passage.

Our embodied robots work outdoors and in harsh outdoor environments at demanding heavy loads. A PV panel weighs at least 30 kilograms and can be moved by a group of people. This is a completely different requirement for our capabilities. You have to be able to actually do the work.

Chinaventure : How much is the next round of financing for companies this year? For embodied intelligence sector, we are basically raising several hundred million or even one billion yuan.

WANG Shitao : We won't raise so much at once. We can't spend it. Financing will still be based on the Company's needs and development.

Chinaventure : Leapting passed market validation last year and has a first-mover advantage in commercialization, technology, algorithms and data. On the other hand, China's PV industry is highly competitive, and players strive to make constant improvements. How long can your firstmover advantage last?

WANG Shitao : It's more than that. First of all, this demand insight is not easy. Looking at electric vehicles, although so many people are manufacturing them, everyone has different understandings of the demand, different starting points, and the results are very different.

You need to really understand the PV scenario, really go through many sites, and understand the situation of the global market. Just knowing a few power stations is not very valuable. When it comes to machine substitution, you need to be clear about how much it costs to replace humans and what the return on investment (ROI) is. Only when the payback period for ROI is less than two years will customers be motivated. Also, you need to know how to calculate specifically. The more standardized and generalized you define, the less time it takes to recoup the cost.

Investments in domestic human resources are relatively cost-effective and have a long payback period. But in many harsh foreign markets where labor costs are high, there is more motivation for machine substitution, which requires strong internationalization capabilities. We have been a robust internationalized team from the very beginning. For many overseas operations, including market expansion, we use local employees instead of dispatching people.

Another one is the technical barrier. The technical barriers and demands in the outdoor environment are very high. A lot of demanding requirements on everything are made in wind, frost, rain and snow conditions. For example, our robot works in Australia at a maximum temperature of 48℃, and people can only stay outside for about 10 minutes with ice packs on their backs to work.

This involves the outdoor environment changes, your sensors, vision, how to keep precise positioning and so on. These are the basic barriers, and we need to train the algorithm to achieve accurate results, which can already reach one-millimeter precision.

Chinaventure : How "hellish"is the working environment of a PV power station?

WANG Shitao : It's very painful. For instance, in 2008 when I was in Xinjiang participating in a PV grid-connected project, I spent a month and a half in the desert, only took three baths, and everything was inconvenient for food and accommodation. I felt at the time that humanity should be liberated from such a painful environment.

Chinaventure : What are the most important concerns for investors at this stage?

WANG Shitao : Everyone has noticed that the PV installation robot has truly completed PMF and is about to enter batch application. The huge acceleration has already been achieved. Everyone hopes that we can achieve commercialization and market coverage as soon as possible.

Concretely, we have achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1 in 2025, and we will have achieved a breakthrough from 1 to 100 or even 10, 000 by 2026.

Chinaventure : Why dose Capital Today become a strategic shareholder?

WANG Shitao : Capital Today is a leading fund and serves as an important endorsement for companies. In addition, Capital Today is a very strong state-backed investment firm, providing a robust boost to the internationalization of the Company. Mr. XU Xin also gave the Company and the team a lot of very good suggestions.

Chinaventure : Which piece of advice do you think is the most important?

WANG Shitao : She sees a possibility and strongly advises us to do a solid job of coverage in 2026, make bold and fast steps, and take the first market share of PV installation robots.

Chinaventure : Leapting is currently mainly targeting overseas markets. Why is its share in the Chinese market not high? Is it because of the intense competition?

WANG Shitao : We are focusing on the global market, and we really want to do the same for the Chinese market too. It's just that the cost-effectiveness of domestic manpower is relatively high at present, and it's not easy to settle accounts.

Chinaventure : What do you think of the differences in concepts between industrial robots and humanoid robots? For instance, a humanoid robot founder said in an interview that no matter how well industrial robots were made, they were in a vertical industry and may not even change the industry, but the artificial intelligence track had the potential to change the world.

WANG Shitao : No matter what kind of robot it is, it is still in the early stages. You see, Boston Dynamics has been working on humanoid robots for so many years, and China has only entered a period of rapid development in recent years, including industrial robotic arms, which have been around for a very long time.

I'm not saying who is right or wrong. Everyone still has to run on the track for a long time, but in the end, they will all come to the same destination to answer one question - what value can robots bring? Who will change the world or how, I don't think that's very important. What matters most is what value can be brought to humanity.

What we are doing now is to make it less difficult for people to work in harsh environments while providing them with cheap, efficient clean energy. That's what we are doing.

In the future, we hope to achieve autonomous, fully unmanned installations, and the greater value lies in building PV power stations anywhere in the world, and even on other planets in the future.