Yuanyjie Robotics raises seed round to automate restaurant kitchens with embodied AI
创业邦 · wechat · 2026-10-01
Yuanjie Intelligent, founded in March 2026 by Wang Dong (Tsinghua PhD, 10 years at Meituan Waimai), builds embodied robots for restaurant back kitchens, starting with takeout packing and sorting. It raised a seven-figure (RMB) seed round led by Innolight-backed Innoangel's sci-tech fund.
- China and Western markets each have 30M kitchen workers; labor is 20% of restaurant cost in China, 30-40% in the US, with mis-packed orders directly hurting ratings and triggering refunds.
- The robot uses dual arms with two-finger grippers instead of costly five-finger hands, targeting 80% of human speed during peak hours; pilot deployments begin Q4.
- In-house tech stack centers on an object-centric 4D representation (3D space + time) for generalization with fewer parameters; the team keeps data collection in-house and targets half-day per-store deployment.
- Founder argues the moat is scene understanding, hardware definition and a data flywheel — not models — and envisions selling robot-performed services overseas (North America, SEA) priced per task rather than selling machines.
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