--- title: "Emotional-companion robot EIR lands Sichuan's first ¥100M Pre-A" date: 2026-10-23 category: Capital & Markets site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-eir-emotional-robot-prea language: en --- # Emotional-companion robot EIR lands Sichuan's first ¥100M Pre-A > Sichuan Embodied Tech (四川具身科技), maker of the emotional-interaction robot Ai Qiu (爱湫), closed a >¥100M Pre-A led by Chengdu state capital, in a three-tier state-backed deal. China's robotics money has mostly chased factory arms and warehouse legs. A Chengdu startup arguing that the next mass-market robot needs a face and a mood just closed the largest early-stage round its province has seen in the field. Sichuan Embodied Humanoid Robot Technology Co., Ltd. (四川具身人形机器人科技有限公司), which goes by EIR, said it has completed a Pre-A round of more than ¥100 million (≈ US$1.4 million-plus, reported as "over ¥100M" / 超亿元). The deal was led by the Chengdu Future Industry Angel Fund (成都未来产业天使基金), managed by the Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group (成都科创投集团). Local press described it as Sichuan's first Pre-A round in embodied intelligence to exceed ¥100 million. ## A robot built around feelings, not torque Where most humanoid makers optimize for payload and repeatability, EIR leads with emotional interaction. Its flagship, the Ai Qiu (爱湫) robot, is designed to perceive, recognize and express emotion, and the company has trademarked an "Emotion Native" (情感原生) philosophy to describe building affection and conversation into the hardware from the start. - The technical core is an "EIR Harness" emotional-native embodied-interaction hub that coordinates perception, memory, interaction, navigation and motion so expressions, speech and movement stay consistent. - The company proposes a 3D ultra-short-throw projected face — a distinctive approach that puts lifelike expressions on a three-dimensional surface rather than a flat screen, while keeping production cost low enough for volume manufacturing. - EIR says Ai Qiu can switch identities and expressions via digital content, so one hardware platform can serve tourism characters, brand IP and home companionship. EIR also builds a four-legged inspection robot, Tianxun (天巡), for parks, plants and power scenarios, and a general-motion humanoid, Tianxingzhe (天行者), aimed at training and research testing. The emotional robot is the headline, but the portfolio signals a company hedging across service, industrial and research buyers. ## The people and the place EIR was founded in September 2024 in the Chengdu High-tech Zone (成都高新区), and its core team comes from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (电子科技大学, UESTC). Co-founder and CEO Feng Zhenyu (冯振宇) told local media the round landed after Ai Qiu completed product launch and first order wins. The startup was named to the "2026 China's Most Growth-Potential Robot Companies TOP20" list released during the 2026 World Robot Conference (世界机器人大会), and Ai Qiu has appeared at WAIC 2026, the same World Robot Conference, and the second World Humanoid Robot Games. Those showcase slots matter less than the manufacturing plan: EIR says the proceeds will fund a 10,000-unit-class intelligent production base in the Kaizhou New City (凯州新城) area of Deyang. ## A three-tier state stack The most unusual feature of this round is its structure. Rather than a single lead investor, EIR assembled provincial, municipal and county state capital in one coordinated package: - Lead: Chengdu Future Industry Angel Fund, managed by Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group. - Deyang Investment Holdings Group (德阳投控集团), the Kaizhou New City Industry Fund (凯州新城产业基金) and the Zhongjiang High-tech Zone Industry Fund (中江高新区产业基金), managed by Sichuan Xingchuan (四川兴川). - Additional project support from the Sichuan Provincial Pilot R&D Co. (四川省中试研发有限公司). That "provincial-municipal-county three-tier" (省、市、县三级国资) alignment is deliberately built to connect Chengdu's research base with Deyang's high-end equipment manufacturing, so R&D, assembly and deployment happen inside one metropolitan cluster. A new round has already been opened. ## Why Sichuan is betting on soft robotics Sichuan has been rolling out explicit support for the AI and robotics chain. A revised provincial policy promotes intelligent manufacturing, embodied intelligence, service robots and large models, and offers up to ¥20 million (≈ US$2.8 million) for qualifying AI and robotics demonstration applications. For a young company, that stack of grants, pilot sites and state co-investment lowers the cost of the long road from prototype to volume product. The consumer price point is also part of the story. Local reporting puts Ai Qiu's starting price around ¥98,000 (≈ US$13,800) — a concrete coordinate for a small bipedal humanoid positioned between task capability and companionship, with affordability treated as a design constraint rather than an afterthought. ## Deployment takeaways According to Li An, chief scientist at BrainNet (脑机网), the emotional-interaction layer is where Chinese consumer robotics can differentiate from pure industrial automation, but durable advantage will come from real interaction data, not from the projected face alone. ## Honest limitations - The "over ¥100 million" figure is a threshold statement from Sichuan provincial and Chengdu municipal media; the exact amount and per-investor allocation were not disclosed. - Ai Qiu's ¥98,000 starting price comes from a single industry-news report and may reflect a launch quote rather than a stable list price. - Emotional interaction claims (perceive, recognize, express emotion) are vendor descriptions; independent benchmarks for "emotional" performance do not yet exist in this category. - A 10,000-unit production base is a capacity plan, not current output; EIR has not published shipment or revenue figures. - Regional policy support caps (such as the ¥20 million demonstration grant) are program limits, not commitments to any single company, and application success is competitive. ## What readers can do now - Watch for EIR's next round terms — a quick follow-on at a higher valuation would confirm whether state capital sees emotional robotics as a durable category. - If you follow China's robotics map, track the Chengdu–Deyang cluster as a rising alternative to the Shenzhen and Beijing hubs, especially for service and companion robots. - Separate "demo emotion" from "shippable reliability": look for EIR's first published multi-unit deployment in a service setting before treating Ai Qiu as commercially proven. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-eir-emotional-robot-prea Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.