Authors: @Zhang Yiheng @Chen Zhiyan

In 2018, Wang Xingxing received an investment of 2 million yuan.

This funding came from Variable Capital under Geek Park, marking the first institutional financing in the history of Yushu and the second investment after Yin Fangming.

This story has been written by many: At that time, Wang Xingxing hardly fit the image of the investment circle: he was not a PhD from a prestigious university, had no overseas background, nor any experience as a senior executive at a big company; the quadruped robot he created was an obscure direction with no clear market identified.

When the financing quickly ran out, Wang Xingxing at one point had to pay salaries from his own pockets.

According to the jargon of the investment industry, Wang Xingxing was indeed too "non-consensus." Therefore, until the Yushu robotic dog appeared on the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Ox and the price of the Go1 was reduced to 16,000 yuan, financing for Yushu was not very easy.

Until just before the Chinese New Year in 2024, the Series B round saw Meituan, Jinshi Investment, and Source Code Capital all enter the scene. By then, Yushu had made the transition from "What is the use of a robotic dog?" to "Who else can obtain a stake in Yushu," gradually becoming a consensus company in the primary market.

On the big day of the IPO, "elsewhere" decided to present this financing story in a different way.

We found some of Yushu's investors and requested some old materials—WeChat records with Wang Xingxing from seven years ago, investment memos in file cabinets, photos and videos stored in phones, etc., to concretely recreate this long story.

Starting a business is a matter of life and death. Being able to invest early in a great company is probably a matter with less than a 1% chance. This is also where the story of Yushu and its financing shines.

The ancient stories always have a different charm. Below is an online exhibition of the Yushu financing story.

WeChat friends found from QQ email

In July 2019, Li Yannian, then an analyst at Sequoia China Seed Fund, heard about Yushu from a senior at Zhejiang University.

The Yushu official website only had a QQ email listed. Li Yannian traced back the WeChat ID through the email and sent a friend request to Wang Xingxing.

Three days later, Li Yannian visited for the first time.

Sitting in a sleeper train to Beijing

Li Yannian still has the footage on his phone from July 21, 2019, when he first visited Yushu, showing Wang Xingxing demonstrating AlienGo.

A month later, together with partner Cao Xi, they pushed Yushu to the investment committee at Sequoia China. Before the decision meeting, Wang Xingxing proactively proposed to bring a robotic dog to demonstrate in Beijing—A1, "which can fit into a 20-inch suitcase." Due to the robotic dog’s battery exceeding limits, it could not take a flight or high-speed rail. He took a sleeper train for over ten hours from Hangzhou to Beijing. After the demonstration, he took the sleeper train back.

Before attending the Sequoia investment decision meeting, Wang Xingxing asked Li Yannian: Is it okay to bring a dog over?

Later, Li Yannian discovered that whenever there was an opportunity to showcase a product, Wang Xingxing was very enthusiastic. For several years, he proactively suggested bringing the robotic dog to Sequoia's CEO summit and LP meetings. One year, when there was no exhibition booth, he waited outside the venue with the robotic dog.

An 8-point score

When the partners at Sequoia graded Yushu, Cao Xi, still a seed fund partner at the time, gave it an 8. This was the highest score given among the handful of people there.

Those familiar with Sequoia's IC scoring system know what an 8 means. According to a description by Sequoia Capital in our video podcast, an 8 means "must invest."

In this memo, there was a particularly interesting line: "Really like this person."

Severe subjectivity as an outlier

In an internal evaluation at a VC, Wang Xingxing was described in the founder section as: "Severely specialized, learned coding and researched mechanics by himself at age 13, developed his first robot in college, and should not be considered a typical outlier from a conventional background. No special deficiencies were found at the moment; there are some unique ways of communication he insists on, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, has minimal overall impact."

Wang Xingxing's master's thesis

The books of a company with only 18 people

In March 2020, the investment decision meeting materials from Chuchuang Capital recorded the situation of Yushu at that time—

The entire company consisted of 18 people, with 70% in technology; total revenue for 2019 was 11.8282 million yuan, with a net profit margin of 26.5% and R&D expenses accounting for 41%.

The client list was divided into two columns: 30 domestic clients, mostly laboratories in universities and research institutes; and 12 foreign clients, including Google, Nvidia, Apple, and Android's father Andy Rubin.

When benchmarking Boston Dynamics, similar products were still being rented out for nearly $10,000 a month, while Yushu's Laikago was priced between 20,000 to 30,000 yuan.

Yushu's financial situation in 2019 After comparing data from various similar products at that time, Chuchuang Capital concluded Yushu's advantages: good motion performance, highest overall integration, lowest cost, and clear product positioning and target customers.

A set of strange interview questions

Wang Xingxing has a system for recognizing people. During early recruitment, every applicant, including those at the front desk, had to answer a set of 12 questions in writing. Besides professional capability, some questions were quite peculiar, such as: "In the last few hundred years, significant technological advances have originated from the West. What do you think are the reasons for this?" "What is your opinion on traditional Chinese medicine?" etc.

We also found a "find the difference" question with an image. If you're interested, you can give it a try.

The Yushu in the investment memo

We also found some written materials from different investors during investment decisions. The following are from multiple partners across several institutions, with both positive and negative remarks.

The "technology tree" during the growth phase

The financing process of Yushu can be clearly divided into different stages:

In the initial establishment period, it first secured 2 million yuan in seed investment from Yin Fangming, followed by angel investments from Variable Capital, Anchuang Technology, Binhe Investment, etc., primarily supporting the R&D and productization of the quadruped robot prototype.

After 2019, Sequoia China, Xiangfeng Investment, Shunwei Capital, Chuchuang Capital, and Jingwei Venture Capital successively entered, marking Yushu's transition from technological validation to commercial expansion.

And after 2024, from the perspective of growth-stage investors, Yushu has both evolved and remained the same.

In mid-2024, Guanghe Venture Capital sought an investment opportunity, entering with a valuation of 3.5 billion. This was the investment memo written by Guanghe Venture Capital partner Zhu Jia at that time in his phone notes.

At the end of 2023, Source Code Capital left such a record—

The training ground for Yushu’s robotic dogs is on the rooftop, and each mechanical dog has to climb stairs from the office daily. With repeated climbing and falling, certain edges of those staircases have become worn and chipped, the debris may be cleared, but the stairs are not specifically renovated, just cleaned up and used again. "From this detail, it is seen that this is a team that still mainly invests its energy into product testing and R&D iteration."

Source Code Managing Partner Huang Yungang said: "Wang Xingxing is an extremely restrained entrepreneur, not blindly investing. Even when Yushu later became popular and had more resources, strategically, he still prioritized refining hardware and the small brain as much as possible."

Additionally, Jinqiu Fund observed Yushu from 2020 to 2025, "discovering Yushu's extreme focus." What truly impressed Jinqiu was that Yushu ranked first in market share. "80% of the papers are based on Yushu's body, giving it a significant ecological advantage." Another technological judgment was that reinforcement learning for motion control brought crucial technical variables.

In a closed-door meeting of Jinqiu Fund, Wang Xingxing talked about the meaning behind Yushu's name and mentioned that he enjoys watching anime in his free time.

Captured in an album

In November 2021, Wang Huadong, Managing Partner at Jingwei Venture Capital, ordered a Go1 for himself during due diligence on Yushu. He said, "I might be one of the first few personal consumers in the country to buy a Go1." The picture shows Wang Huadong's children curiously fiddling with the Go1 after it arrived.

In the second half of 2018, when Yushu's Laikago officially shipped, several hundred units had already been sold overseas. This is when Xiangfeng Capital later helped Yushu connect with overseas clients, and Wang Xingxing introduced the specific components of G1 "Iron Fist King."

Guanghe Venture Capital partner Zhu Jia placed an R1 in the office, waiting for about half a year from ordering to delivery. On the day of delivery, the two shook hands.

On April 16, 2025, G1 and Xue Wang greeted guests together at the Meituan Longzhu investor annual meeting. Yushu and Mixue are representative projects for Longzhu in both technology and consumer sectors, and the investors found it interesting to see them together, leading to this group photo.

Monolith founding partner Cao Xi placed two Yushu products at the entrances of the Shanghai and Beijing offices: one is a G1 dressed in Monolith's work attire and bow tie, and the other is the robotic cow "Niu Ben Ben." This "Niu Ben Ben" was a gift from Wang Xingxing to Cao Xi after the Yushu robotic dog first appeared on the Spring Festival Gala in 2021.

By the way, "Niu Ben Ben" is a modified version based on A1. It is the same model as the "dog" that was stuffed into that suitcase and taken by sleeper train to Beijing in 2019.