BEIJING — RobotPlusPlus has closed a Series C round the company describes as worth hundreds of millions of RMB, or tens of millions of US dollars, led by Qianggang Capital Fund. The Beijing company builds special-purpose robots for work at height, and its hull-derusting machines have now stripped and prepped more than 10,000 large cargo vessels across 100-plus shipyards worldwide — a share of that market the company puts above 70%.
By the numbers
GIG Capital Group, Sealand Innovation and Juntong Capital joined the round, with existing backer Fosun RZ Capital increasing its stake. The company reports more than 2 million cumulative operating hours across its fleet, 480-plus patents, and over 60% of staff in R&D. It says it is active in 18 countries, naming NOSCO Shipyard in Vietnam, Drydocks World in Dubai, ST Engineering Marine in Singapore, Saudi Aramco and Vopak as customers.
Hull derusting is one of the ugliest jobs in shipbuilding. Workers on suspended platforms blast rust and old coating off steel, breathing abrasive dust, for weeks per vessel. It is also the kind of job where a robot does not need general intelligence — it needs to stick to a curved steel wall, track its own coverage, and not fall off. That narrowness is why this corner of robotics has commercial scale while humanoids are still shipping in the hundreds.
The same platform is being pushed into tank surface preparation, wind turbine blade inspection and building facade cleaning — adjacent markets that share the core problem of holding position on a large vertical surface. RobotPlusPlus frames the operating hours as a data asset as much as a revenue line, arguing the fleet is training itself in the field.
“The true value of industrial robotics lies in real-world execution. Over ten years, we have built special-purpose robots that are genuinely deployable at scale, and this round lets us bring those solutions to more industrial sites around the world.”
Dr. Hua-Yang Xu, Founder and CEO, RobotPlusPlus
One caveat worth stating plainly: the company has not disclosed an exact figure, a pre- or post-money valuation, or revenue. The deployment statistics are the company’s own and are not independently audited. What is verifiable is that the round closed and who led it.
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