A robotics professor at one of China's most selective universities decided the papers were not enough. The useful test, he reasoned, was a machine that could actually do a job.
That professor is Chen Jianyu, and the job he picked first was unglamorous: moving parcels in a warehouse. His company, RobotEra (星动纪元), has become one of the better-funded attempts in China to turn the humanoid (人形机器人) from a demo into a deployed worker.
RobotEra was founded in August 2023 and is, by the company's own description, the only embodied-intelligence (具身智能) firm in which Tsinghua University holds direct equity (RobotEra official site; Pandaily, March 2026). Chen serves as founder and chief executive while remaining an associate professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua's Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (RobotEra official site; Pandaily).
Key takeaways
- RobotEra launched in August 2023 as Tsinghua University's only equity-held embodied-intelligence company (RobotEra site; Pandaily).
- Founder Chen Jianyu is a Tsinghua associate professor who earned his PhD at UC Berkeley under control pioneer Masayoshi Tomizuka (RobotEra site).
- The company has raised reported cumulative funding above RMB 4 billion, about US$560 million (CE.cn; Pandaily).
- Its STAR1/L7 humanoid stands 1.71 m with 55 degrees of freedom; a dexterous hand and wheeled robot round out the line (IFNews; RobotEra site).
- RobotEra says it began thousand-unit deliveries in Q2 2026, with SF Express and China Post as early logistics sites (Pandaily; CE.cn).
From the lab to the loading dock
Chen's path reads like a standard elite-engineering biography, with one twist. He completed his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, where his advisor was Masayoshi Tomizuka, an architect of model predictive control theory (RobotEra official site). Before founding RobotEra he spent time inside autonomous-driving programs including Waymo and Denso, and he was recruited to Tsinghua in 2020 by the institute led by Turing Award winner Andrew Yao (RobotEra official site; Beijing Daily coverage).
What makes the story less standard is the decision to commercialize inside a university structure rather than after leaving it. RobotEra's pitch is vertical integration: it designs the robot brain, the five-fingered dexterous hand, and the bipedal body in-house, claiming more than 95% self-developed hardware (RobotEra site; CE.cn). The logic, repeated by co-founder Xi Yue in Pandaily's reporting, is that logistics sorting can be useful at 50–60% of human capability, a far lower bar than auto factories demand.
The product line
RobotEra has built a small but complete hardware family rather than a single hero machine.
- STAR1 / L7: a full-size bipedal humanoid, 1.71 m tall, with 55 degrees of freedom, built for industrial scenarios.
- XHAND1: a five-fingered dexterous hand that the company says has already shipped in volume.
- Q5: a wheeled service humanoid aimed at commercial interaction and guided tasks.
- ERA-42: the embodied large model (大模型) that ties perception, reasoning, and manipulation together.
The company says its hardware self-development rate exceeds 95% and that the same software stack runs across the lineup, so lessons from one body transfer to the others (RobotEra site; CE.cn).
What the money bought
The fundraising has been unusually dense. In a March 5, 2026 strategic round, RobotEra raised RMB 1 billion — about US$141 million at the fixed rate used in this article — pushing its valuation past RMB 10 billion, roughly US$1.4 billion, with backers including Samsung and Singtel (Pandaily; CE.cn). Weeks later, in late April 2026, it closed a further round of more than US$200 million led by the courier giant SF Express (China Securities Network; CE.cn).
Across 2026 the company has reported cumulative financing above RMB 4 billion (about US$560 million), including a July round led by a State-owned asset fund (CE.cn; finet.hk summary of Bloomberg reporting). Nine of the world's ten largest technology firms by market capitalization are described by the company as customers, though neither RobotEra nor the outlets repeating the claim name them or specify what was purchased (RobotEra site; CE.cn; Pandaily).
Where the robots actually work
The chosen battleground is parcel handling. RobotEra says its STAR1 humanoid, XHAND1 hand, and ERA-42 model are running proof-of-concept sorting at SF Express and China Post centers in southern and eastern China (Pandaily; CE.cn). Pandaily reported the machines can sort up to 1,200 parcels per hour, a figure the outlet attributes to the company and which no independent audit has confirmed.
The more believable operational signal is volume. RobotEra told Pandaily it began thousand-unit-level deliveries in the second quarter of 2026 and posted 300% quarter-on-quarter growth, while its largest single logistics order approached RMB 50 million (about US$7 million). Cumulative orders reportedly exceed RMB 500 million (around US$70 million), with overseas business near half (Pandaily).
Why logistics, not the factory floor
Chen frames the sector as a "barrel game" where the shortest plank sets the ceiling, and argues the path is a flywheel of brain, body, and scene feeding each other (remarks at the 2026 World Robot Conference, via NetEase coverage). It is a calm counter to the louder humanoid narrative that chases home helpers and flashy stunts.
The contrarian read is simple: a professor-backed company is deliberately avoiding the hardest, most hyped uses first. Whether parcel sorting can ever cover the cost of a full-size humanoid remains the open question, and RobotEra's own customer list is the claim most in need of names.
Honest limitations
This article relies on company statements repeated by Chinese financial outlets and by Pandaily; RobotEra has not published independent uptime, error-rate, or cost-per-parcel data for its deployments. The "nine of ten top tech firms" customer claim is asserted by the company and not independently verified here. Biographical details such as Chen's birth year and award listings come from the company bio and are presented as the company states them. Reported funding totals aggregate rounds that some outlets date differently, and the US-dollar figures here use a fixed RMB 7.1 = US$1 rate.
What readers can do now
- Check RobotEra's official site and Pandaily's March 2026 funding piece for primary figures before citing valuation or customer counts.
- Track SF Express and China Post logistics results for any disclosed productivity or labor-substitution numbers tied to humanoids.
- Compare RobotEra's logistics-first approach with Unitree's and UBTECH's deployment strategies when judging which humanoid business model is more credible.