The $6 Billion Chinese Startup Trying to Build Hands for Every Robot
The $6 Billion Chinese Startup Trying to Build Hands for Every Robot
这家估值60亿美元的中国初创公司，正试图为每个机器人装上“手”
If you could buy a humanoid robot for less than a smartphone, would you? Would you buy several robots to handle cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and even your job? 如果能以低于智能手机的价格买到一台人形机器人，你会买吗？你会买几台机器人来处理烹饪、清洁、照看孩子，甚至代替你工作吗？
This is the pitch being made by Zhou Yong, the 40-year-old founder and chief technology officer of LinkerBot, one of China’s leading manufacturers of dexterous humanoid hands. The startup’s hardware comes complete with five fingers and at least 11 joints and is sold for as little as $600 in China. LinkerBot’s hands can play piano, thread needles, tighten screws, and assemble electronics. In three to five years, Zhou predicts, the price for one will fall to just $200. Eventually, “everyone will own 10 robots on average,” Zhou said in an exclusive interview with WIRED. 这就是 LinkerBot 创始人兼首席技术官周勇（40岁）提出的愿景。LinkerBot 是中国领先的灵巧人形机械手制造商之一。该初创公司的硬件产品配备五根手指和至少 11 个关节，在中国市场的售价最低仅为 600 美元。LinkerBot 的机械手可以弹钢琴、穿针引线、拧螺丝以及组装电子产品。周勇预测，三到五年内，其价格将降至 200 美元。在接受《连线》（WIRED）独家采访时，周勇表示：“最终，每个人平均将拥有 10 台机器人。”
Marketing spectacles like the humanoid robot marathon in Beijing have drawn attention to robots’ legs, but the real frontier in humanoids is hands. “The hands are the majority of the engineering difficulty of the entire robot,” Elon Musk said at an event last fall. Founded in 2023, LinkerBot has quickly emerged as a market leader in the space. The company says it shipped 10,000 robotic hands last year, representing 80 percent of worldwide demand. Its clients include research labs, manufacturers, and other humanoid robot makers. 北京人形机器人马拉松等营销奇观吸引了人们对机器人腿部的关注，但人形机器人的真正前沿领域其实是手部。埃隆·马斯克去年秋天在一次活动中曾说：“手部工程占据了整个机器人工程难度的绝大部分。”LinkerBot 成立于 2023 年，已迅速成为该领域的市场领导者。该公司表示，去年出货了 1 万只机械手，占全球需求的 80%。其客户包括研究实验室、制造商以及其他人形机器人制造企业。
The startup is also a venture capital darling: It completed six rounds of fundraising in just 13 months from investors including the Chinese government, Alibaba’s Ant Group, and HongShan Capital, Sequoia Capital’s Chinese spinoff. LinkerBot is now seeking another round of financing at a $6 billion valuation, double what the company said it was worth only a few months ago. And it’s reportedly exploring going public in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg. (Zhou declined to comment on the rumored plans.) 这家初创公司也是风险投资界的宠儿：它在短短 13 个月内完成了六轮融资，投资者包括中国政府、阿里巴巴旗下的蚂蚁集团以及红杉中国（红杉资本的中国分支机构）。据报道，LinkerBot 目前正寻求以 60 亿美元的估值进行新一轮融资，这一估值是该公司几个月前宣称价值的两倍。据彭博社报道，该公司还在探索在香港上市。（周勇拒绝就这些传闻置评。）
In 2019, after selling a previous startup focused on autonomous driving, Zhou turned his attention to robotics. He says he predicted the industry would begin booming around 2025, but was still taken aback by how quickly it grew. While OpenAI was once at the forefront of developing robotic hands, in recent years Chinese startups have taken the lead as many of their American counterparts shifted their focus toward large language models and other AI software. 2019 年，在出售了一家专注于自动驾驶的初创公司后，周勇将目光转向了机器人领域。他说，他曾预测该行业会在 2025 年左右迎来爆发，但其增长速度之快仍令他感到惊讶。虽然 OpenAI 曾处于机器人手部开发的前沿，但近年来，随着许多美国同行将重心转向大语言模型和其他人工智能软件，中国初创公司已占据了领先地位。
For robotics companies, “the valuation gap between the Chinese and US primary markets has been basically erased,” Zhou says. 对于机器人公司而言，周勇表示：“中美一级市场之间的估值差距已基本被抹平。”
Zhou says his lifelong goal is to make a real-life version of Doraemon, the Japanese anime character that has an infinite supply of magical gadgets in its pocket. (His WeChat avatar is a picture of Doraemon.) He sees building a capable, dexterous hand as an instrumental step toward achieving that dream. 周勇说，他毕生的目标是制造出真实版的“哆啦A梦”（日本动漫角色，口袋里有无穷无尽的神奇道具）。（他的微信头像就是哆啦A梦。）他认为，制造出一只功能强大、灵活敏捷的手，是实现这一梦想的关键一步。
Selling Shovels to Miners
卖铲子给矿工
Successful companies, Zhou argues, focus on doing one thing well. That’s why LinkerBot zeroed in on hands, rather than trying to build the entire body of a humanoid. That also allows it to avoid directly competing with leading humanoid companies like Unitree or Tesla. 周勇认为，成功的公司专注于把一件事做好。这就是为什么 LinkerBot 专注于手部，而不是试图制造整个人形机器人。这也使其能够避免与宇树科技（Unitree）或特斯拉等领先的人形机器人公司直接竞争。
“When the humanoid robot industry size is so massive, specializing in making hands is like selling water or shovels [during the gold rush],” says Hong Shangguan, a veteran investor in China’s tech industry and a former partner at the Beijing-based fund Legend Capital. 中国科技行业资深投资人、北京君联资本前合伙人尚观（音译）表示：“当人形机器人产业规模如此巨大时，专门制造手部就像（淘金热期间）卖水或卖铲子一样。”
LinkerBot already has a significant price advantage in the market. Its Linker Hand products range from $600 to $15,000, depending on the number of joints and level of dexterity required. “A lot of companies can show impressive demos. Fewer can ship hands that factories can actually afford to install,” says Rui Ma, founder of the independent research firm Tech Buzz China, which recently published an article concluding that LinkerBot was the startup best positioned to become the industry standard in the short term. LinkerBot 在市场上已经拥有显著的价格优势。其 Linker Hand 系列产品价格从 600 美元到 1.5 万美元不等，具体取决于关节数量和所需的灵活性水平。独立研究公司 Tech Buzz China 的创始人马睿（Rui Ma）表示：“很多公司都能展示令人印象深刻的演示，但能交付工厂真正买得起并安装的机械手的公司却很少。”该机构最近发表的一篇文章得出结论：LinkerBot 是短期内最有潜力成为行业标准的初创公司。
Zhou has a lot of confidence in the strength of China’s manufacturing industry. In every product category, “as long as China and other countries started around the same time, China always ends up leading it—whether it’s solar panels or electric vehicles,” he says. But the challenge is figuring out how to position that less as a threat and more as an opportunity. “We are helping global robotics manufacturers lower their costs and accelerate wider adoption,” Zhou argues. To overcome long-standing skepticism about the quality of Chinese-made products, the company is offering international buyers up to a year to exchange them. 周勇对中国制造业的实力充满信心。他说，在每一个产品类别中，“只要中国和其他国家起步时间差不多，中国最终总能处于领先地位——无论是太阳能电池板还是电动汽车。”但挑战在于如何将这种优势定位为机遇而非威胁。周勇辩称：“我们正在帮助全球机器人制造商降低成本，并加速其更广泛的普及。”为了克服长期以来对中国制造产品质量的质疑，该公司为国际买家提供长达一年的换货服务。
Robots Will Replace Us
机器人将取代我们
Zhou says the rollout of humanoid robots will happen in three stages. First, robots will dance, greet guests, and fulfill emotional or entertainment roles, capabilities Chinese companies have already showcased extensively over the past year. Next, they’ll take on narrowly defined jobs like making drinks, cooking, and sorting packages. The final stage, he says, will be deploying them in complex environments such as the home. A robot may need to operate in hundreds of different homes, and “each one could have a completely different layout and different objects,” he says. Such varied scenarios will require robots to combine many different skill sets to finish even one small job. 周勇表示，人形机器人的推广将分三个阶段进行。首先，机器人将进行跳舞、迎接客人以及承担情感或娱乐角色，这些能力中国公司在过去一年中已经进行了广泛展示。其次，它们将承担一些定义明确的工作，如制作饮料、烹饪和分拣包裹。他说，最后阶段将是在家庭等复杂环境中部署它们。机器人可能需要在数百个不同的家庭中工作，而“每个家庭的布局和物品可能完全不同，”他说。这种多变的场景将要求机器人结合多种不同的技能，才能完成哪怕是一项小工作。
One of LinkerBot’s current strategies is to tailor its hands for use in sophisticated manufacturing facilities, especially as the Chinese economy looks to upgrade its factories. The company is even using its robotic hands in its own assembly lines to make more robotic hands, demonstrating their industrial usefulness. LinkerBot 目前的策略之一是为其机械手量身定制，以用于精密制造设施，特别是在中国经济寻求工厂升级的背景下。该公司甚至在自己的装配线上使用其机械手来制造更多的机械手，以展示其工业实用性。
China has long been known for having cheap labor, but domestic manufacturers have a large appetite for automation, Shangguan says. “When I visited EV factories in China and talked to the production managers, they said even China is facing a labor shortage problem.” 尚观表示，中国长期以来以廉价劳动力著称，但国内制造商对自动化的需求非常大。“当我参观中国的电动汽车工厂并与生产经理交谈时，他们说即使是中国也正面临劳动力短缺的问题。”