Dexmal, an Alibaba-backed embodied-AI startup founded 17 months ago, is negotiating a $3 billion valuation

Dexmal, a Chinese embodied-AI startup barely 17 months old, is in talks to raise new funding at a 20 billion yuan valuation — roughly $3 billion. Founder Tang Wenbin told Bloomberg at Beijing's World Robot Conference this week that the number is still being negotiated, not a signed term sheet. Founded in March 2025 and registered across Chongqing and Beijing, Dexmal builds software and hardware meant to give robots "universality, reliability, dexterity, and intelligence through end-to-end large-model technology" — the current industry term for training one model to handle perception, planning, and physical control together, rather than stitching those together from separate systems.

The jump is steep against what Dexmal has actually raised to date: roughly ¥1 billion (~$140 million) across two rounds, an A round led by NIO Capital with Hongtai Fund, Legend Capital and others, and a follow-on A+ round led by Alibaba. A later round also included Chinese AI lab Z.AI, better known as Zhipu. A company that has raised $140 million total is now negotiating a valuation more than twenty times that — not unusual in China's current embodied-AI funding climate, but a real gap between capital actually banked and the number being floated to new investors.

Embodied AI — models built to control a physical body rather than just generate text or images — is the phrase drawing the money right now. Dexmal's talks surfaced the same week Beijing's World Robot Conference drew more than 300 exhibitors, a reported 36% jump from last year, and on the conference's own opening day Unitree made its Shanghai trading debut, closing up more than 460%. Dexmal isn't Unitree — it sells the software layer that controls a robot body, not the hardware itself — but the two stories share a backdrop: Chinese investors and state-linked funds are pricing embodied AI well ahead of any company's actual shipped revenue.