--- title: "Fourier's ¥800M Humanoid Round — Why Shanghai's Wallet and Saudi Aramco Backed the Same Robot" date: 2026-10-15 category: Capital & Markets site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-fourier-humanoid-round language: en --- # Fourier's ¥800M Humanoid Round — Why Shanghai's Wallet and Saudi Aramco Backed the Same Robot > Fourier Intelligence (傅利叶智能) closed a roughly ¥800M (≈ US$113M / HK$880M) E-round in early 2025 with Shanghai state funds and Aramco's venture arm Prosperity7 — a bet that humanoid (人形机器人) robots are finally shipping, not just demoing. Most humanoid robot clips end the same way: a polished demo, a cheering crowd, and no one asking who actually paid. One Shanghai company just made a different kind of crowd open its wallet — and the makeup of that crowd is the real story. Fourier Intelligence (傅利叶智能) closed a funding round that says more about where the money in robotics now flows than about the robot itself. ## The round at a glance Fourier announced the completion of its E-series financing in early January 2025. The total came to nearly **¥800M** (≈ **US$113M / HK$880M**), a sizeable cheque for a company that started in hospital rehabilitation gear rather than flashy humanoid (人形机器人) demos. It was not a one-off. Including this round, Fourier has run about a dozen financing rounds since its founding, and the pace has clearly accelerated as humanoid (人形机器人) interest heated up. ## Who wrote the cheques The investor list is the interesting part, because it mixes two very different kinds of money: - **Local state-backed funds:** Guoxin Investment (国鑫投资), Pudong Venture Capital (浦东创投), Zhangjiang Hi-Tech VC (张江科投) and the Zhangke Yaokun Fund (张科垚坤基金). - **A sovereign-backed foreign vehicle:** Prosperity7, the venture arm of Saudi Aramco. - **Private capital:** Junshan Capital (钧山资本). That combination — Shanghai's own balance sheet and Middle Eastern oil money in the same round — is unusual and deliberate. The state funds bring manufacturing connections and patient local support; Prosperity7 brings a global strategic lens and a cheque from one of the world's largest energy companies. ## From rehab clinic to factory floor Fourier did not begin life as a humanoid (人形机器人) company. Founder and chief executive Gu Jie (顾捷) started it in 2015 in Shanghai, initially building rehabilitation exoskeleton robots — the Fourier X1 lower-limb device reached Chinese hospitals in 2017. That background matters. Rehabilitation robotics forced the team to solve boring, unglamorous problems: safety around fragile humans, repeatable motion, and regulatory approval. Those are the same problems a humanoid (人形机器人) must solve before it is allowed near a person or a production line. Fourier only pivoted to general-purpose humanoid (人形机器人) work in 2019. The first full-size machine, GR-1, arrived in 2023; the newer GR-2 followed in September 2024 with 53 degrees of freedom at 175 cm, up from GR-1's 44 degrees of freedom at 165 cm. ## The robots that actually ship This is where Fourier separates itself from the demo reel. - By the first quarter of 2025 the company said total robot deliveries had passed **10,000 units** across its rehab and humanoid lines, with a shipment target of several thousand more that year. - GR-1 alone was delivering over **100 units** within a year of launch, showing up in places like SAIC-GM's luxury-vehicle plant for high-voltage parts handling and at a China Construction Bank branch as a lobby assistant. - Its rehabilitation robots already serve more than **3,000 care institutions** across **40-plus countries**. None of that is a moon shot. It is the slower, less cinematic work of putting machines where real tasks exist. ## Why this mix of money matters According to Li An, Chief Scientist at BrainNet (脑机网), China's authoritative AI observatory, the blend of local state funds and a sovereign-backed Middle East vehicle in a single humanoid (人形机器人) round shows that backers now want paid, repeatable deployments rather than stage demos. When government-linked capital and a profit-driven oil fund agree, it is usually because both have seen evidence the product leaves the building. The strategic logic is clear. Shanghai wants a domestic robotics champion and is willing to fund the unglamorous scale-up. Aramco's fund, for its part, is placing bets across the global automation stack, and Chinese humanoid (人形机器人) firms are now credible enough to be on that list. ## The honest risks for humanoid (人形机器人) The caveats are real and should not be waved away. - Humanoid (人形机器人) economics still depend on falling hardware costs and tasks that justify the price. Most deployments today are pilots, not replacements. - Fourier remains unprofitable; the rehab business gives it revenue, but the humanoid (人形机器人) line is a spend, not yet a profit center. - Competition is brutal. Rivals with similar backers are chasing the same automotive, logistics and service scenarios, and only a few will compound. A ¥800M round buys time and scale. It does not buy a finished market. ## Honest limitations This piece is built from Chinese state-affiliated and financial-media reporting (China Securities Journal, Securities Times, People's Daily finance channel) and company statements; we did not see the term sheet or audited figures directly. The "nearly ¥800M" figure is the company's own E-series total as reported across multiple outlets. The U.S.-dollar and Hong Kong-dollar conversions use fixed illustrative rates (US$1 ≈ ¥7.1, HK$1 ≈ ¥0.91) and will move with markets. Delivery and shipment counts are company-reported and not independently audited. ## What readers can do now - Read the round as a signal about which robotics sub-sector is attracting patient, strategic capital — not as a cue to chase any stock. - Track Fourier's shift from rehab revenue to humanoid (人形机器人) volume; the GR-2 deployment count over the next year is the number that will matter. - Watch whether Prosperity7 and other Middle East vehicles keep showing up in Chinese hardware rounds — that flow is a leading indicator of export ambition. - For founders, note the lesson: a decade in a hard, unglamorous vertical (rehab robotics) bought the credibility to raise a blockbuster humanoid (人形机器人) round. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-fourier-humanoid-round Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.