Gasgoo Munich- Gasgoo has learned that Westlake Robotics closed a new funding round in June, securing an exclusive investment of over 100 million yuan from the Henan Investment Group's Huirong Fund. In just five months, the company has completed three rounds, amassing several hundred million yuan in total and building a shareholder base that combines patient capital with industrial synergy.Proceeds from this round will primarily target the continuous iteration of a unified whole-body embodied large model, fortifying the company's algorithmic moat, and accelerating the large-scale deployment of its "Westlake o1" humanoid robot across various industries.Image source: Westlake RoboticsFounded in 2021 and officially launching operations in December 2023, Westlake Robotics is the first independent commercialization project to emerge from Westlake University's research in artificial intelligence and robotics, focusing on tackling R&D challenges in embodied intelligence algorithms.Specifically, the company adheres to a full-stack in-house roadmap: a "general brain + humanoid whole-body cerebellum + self-developed body." It currently boasts two core technologies: the General Motion Large Model (GAE) and a dual pre-training architecture for general large and small brains.GAE serves as the proprietary cerebellum model driving the robot's whole-body coordination. It achieves real-time parsing of natural human motion intent and integrated, compliant execution across multiple joints. By dynamically balancing posture, precisely regulating whole-body movement, and responding to environmental feedback in real time, it addresses persistent industry pain points such as robotic stiffness, imbalance, and inconsistent multi-robot coordination.Leveraging a single motion-capture device and a single operator, GAE enables synchronous teleoperation of multiple robot clusters. This allows a swarm of robots to execute consistent, continuous, and collaborative actions based on the same human intent, creating a "one-person, multi-machine" capability that significantly reduces costs for deployment, scenario debugging, and labor.Meanwhile, the dual pre-training native architecture fuses a Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model with a world model to establish a hierarchical, collaborative intelligence system. The "general brain" handles environmental understanding, long-cycle task decomposition, complex logic reasoning, and global autonomous planning. The "general cerebellum" (GAE) manages millisecond-level whole-body execution, dynamic balance, and real-time posture correction for precise limb movements. A closed-loop data feedback between the two models balances generalization capability with reasoning efficiency at the foundational level.Building on these two proprietary models, Westlake Robotics launched its first full-stack humanoid unit, the "Westlake o1," in early 2026. It has since deployed the robot across business lines including logistics patrol, data acquisition, and cultural tourism performances.About "Seeds Discovery":Gasgoo's "Seeds Discovery" column is designed to create a service platform connecting startups, industry ecosystem partners, investment firms, and local governments, deeply empowering the upstream and downstream supply chain. Since its inception, the column has been dedicated to uncovering standout companies, technologies, and business models that offer inspiration and leadership during the wave of intelligent transformation, driving the growth of innovation within the automotive industry. According to Gasgoo statistics, nearly all startups featured in "Seeds Discovery" have successfully connected with industrial ecosystem resources.
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