Vita Dynamics Completes Seed Round of 100 Million Yuan Investment, Led by Horizon Robotics and Hillhouse Venture Capital

Number 42 Radio learned that Vita Dynamics recently completed a seed round investment of over 100 million yuan, led by Horizon Robotics, a leading autonomous driving company, and Hillhouse Ventures, a top-tier industry investment firm.

In addition, strategic investors including YJ Capital (an early investor in Li Auto with deep resources in the tech industry), Chuxin Capital (which has forward-looking investments in AI, robotics, and hardware), Borui Capital (founded by co-founder of CATL), and BV Baidu Ventures (affiliated with Baidu) also participated in the investment in Vita Dynamics.

Vita Dynamics is a robot product company integrating R&D, manufacturing, sales, and services. Founded in December 2024, its mission is 'to create intelligent partners for living spaces through AI innovation-driven R&D,' dedicated to creating pioneering robot products to provide smarter and more convenient life services for individuals and families.

The founding team of Vita Dynamics consists of three members: Yin Yinan, Zhao Zhelun, and Song Wei. Founder Yin Yinan is a former Vice President and President of the Software Platform Product Line at Horizon Robotics. He has been responsible for Horizon's autonomous driving technology since 2015, leading the development and implementation of the Horizon Journey series autonomous driving and smart cockpit products and solutions, achieving mass production of front-loaded units on a scale of millions from scratch. His team won the Best Paper Award at the international top conference CVPR 2023, ushering in the era of end-to-end autonomous driving.

Hu Kai, CEO of Horizon Robotics, commented on Yin Yinan: 'Yinan is the builder of Horizon's autonomous driving platform from 0 to 1, with rich experience in both forward-looking technology R&D and large-scale mass production. I believe his AI Vision will undoubtedly bring new vitality to the robot industry serving the mass market. Both I and Horizon will provide strong support.'

Co-founder Song Wei graduated from Tsinghua University and is a former Chief Architect of the Software Platform at Horizon Robotics and a founding member of its autonomous driving team. He joined Horizon in May 2016 and was responsible for the application solution design and product implementation of the Journey series chips from Journey 1 to Journey 6 starting in 2017. He achieved breakthroughs in mass production from 0 to 1 for autonomous driving across multiple automakers and possesses extensive experience in the engineering implementation of full-stack AI technologies for software and hardware in the autonomous driving industry. After founding Vita Dynamics, Song Wei will be responsible for the intelligent system and robotics engineering.

Co-founder Zhao Zhelun previously served as Director of Autonomous Driving Products at Li Auto, where he was responsible for the lifecycle definition and delivery of autonomous driving products for the Li ONE (Horizon Journey 3 platform) and the Li L series (NVIDIA Orin-X platform and Horizon Journey 5 platform). During this period, Li Auto launched the first mass-produced autonomous driving products based on the Horizon Journey 3 and Horizon Journey 5 platforms. Meanwhile, Li Auto's AD Max platform (NVIDIA Orin-X) became a first-tier autonomous driving product in the industry through OTA iterations based on user needs. In June 2024, Zhao Zhelun joined Li Auto's newly established product line team as the head of marketing for the first product line, responsible for the marketing of the Li L9 and Li MEGA. On December 22, the cumulative monthly orders for the Li MEGA broke through 1,000 units for the first time.

Prior to this, Zhao Zhelun was among the first batch of self-media entrepreneurs in China focusing on the intelligent automotive sector, co-founding "Garage 42". His Weibo account, "Squad Leader Zhelun," is a familiar name within the intelligent automotive circle, boasting nearly 500,000 followers. After joining Vitha Power, Zhao will primarily be responsible for the productization and market expansion of Embodied AI.

Currently, Vitha Power's founding team consists of approximately 20 members, drawn from core positions in the fields of smart electric vehicles, autonomous driving, smart hardware, Embodied AI, and robotics. This means the company possesses talent with first-tier industry experience in the large-scale mass production of AI products.

In recent years, the track for Embodied AI has grown increasingly popular. In 2022, Tesla launched the humanoid robot Optimus, with Elon Musk claiming that Optimus would eventually be able to do anything humans do not wish to do. Since then, both bipedal and quadruped robot companies have entered a period of explosive growth, particularly as automotive enterprises rushed to enter the field, making the capital market exceptionally active.

Meanwhile, there are no shortages of domestic products already put into application. The Unitree Walker S series has entered multiple automobile factories, including Zeekr, to work; Unitree Technology released a mass-production version of its humanoid robot and announced a price of 99,000 yuan.

Over the past few decades, Embodied AI products have been applied in various fields, appearing on the surface not as new products. However, they happen to integrate the hottest technologies of recent years—electric vehicles, autonomous driving, and AI large models—into a single entity.

This has attracted more talent from the electric vehicle and autonomous driving sectors to the Embodied AI track, creating more opportunities for this emerging industry.