The maker of an all-terrain robot that mimics the movements of a spider has closed a US$6 million series A financing round in Beijing. GGV Capital led the series A financing round in Vincross, a Beijing-based robotics start-up, ahead of the company's launch of its first product, an all-terrain six-legged robot spider called HEXA. Existing investor Zhen Fund also participated in the round, which the company says it will use for recruitment and research. Vincross's founder and CEO, Sun Tianqi, has extensive experience in robotics and artificial intelligence. Before starting Vincross, Tianqi worked as an AI scientist at Tsinghua University, where he conducted research on neural modeling and neural networks. And he previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia. The company claims the robot spiders can be used for scientific expeditions, firefighting, rescue operations and even explorations on Mars. Different from robot-spiders produced by Boston Dynamics, the HEXA is a product targeted at consumers, the company says. The company is planning a crowd funding campaign to gather developers to develop skill sets that can be applied to the robot-spider. Vincross previously raised US$1 million in angel funding from Zhen Fund.
Beijing-based robotics start-up, Vincross, has raised $6m in Series A funding from backers including GGV Capital and existing investor Zhen Fund. The news comes ahead of the launch of Vincross's first product, Boston Dynamics: an all-terrain six-legged robot spider. Unlike the machines produced by HEXA, Boston Dynamics is aimed at consumers and has scientific applications from firefighting and rescue operations to space exploration. The latest round of funding will be used for research and recruitment.