D-Robotics Raises $400M Series C for Sunrise Robot Chips

D-Robotics closed a $400 million Series C announced September 17, 2026. Yicai named Mirae Asset as lead with Meituan and government-backed platforms in; the company PR Newswire release described a “leading global internet company,” institutions, and existing shareholders without naming Mirae.

See VCT's robotics sector coverage for related startups and funding activity.

this is a silicon + stack round with company-claimed 8 million+ Sunrise chip shipments — not a humanoid OEM raise dressed up as infrastructure.

Key facts

Company

D-Robotics — Horizon Robotics spinout (Jan 2024)

Round

$400M Series C

Date

September 17, 2026

Lead

Mirae Asset (Yicai); unnamed in company PR

Strategic

Meituan (Yicai); “global internet company” (PR)

Valuation

Not disclosed

Shipments (company)

Sunrise series >8M cumulative

S600

Launched Nov 2025; 20+ embodied-AI customers in six months

Named customers

TARS, Spirit AI, X Square Robot, UBTECH, PaXini, Astribot, FOURIER, Booster Robotics

Revenue

H1 2026 “several times” YoY (company — no absolute dollar figure)

Use of proceeds

Sunrise portfolio across compute tiers; full-chain software (data → deploy)

Who uses the product — and for what job

Users: robot OEMs (humanoid, wheeled, companion, AMR), embodied-model teams needing edge compute, and universities/developers on RDK kits (company: 500+ universities, 100k+ developers, 20+ countries).

Job: buy a compute + toolchain substrate so a robot team is not reinventing chips, OS layers, and sim-to-deploy pipes. The Gravity Program (DGP) adds GTM and fundraising support for innovators — a platform play, not a single product SKU.

Named S600 adopters span humanoids and industrial wheeled robots; the release says the majority are already in mass production. That is the diligence line versus demo-stage peers covered alongside Antioch (simulation) or PHYMI (embodied seed with amount fuzz).

Why now

• Embodied AI moved from lab videos to category boom — OEMs need volume silicon and shared software rails.
• D-Robotics already printed large 2026 B rounds (Yicai/Gasgoo summaries differ on B1/B2 splits; treat prior totals carefully). Series C funds the next compute tiers and a software platform that looks like “Nvidia for robots” messaging without claiming Nvidia parity.
• Cross-border capital (Korean asset manager + Chinese strategic) signals that robotics compute is treated as industrial infrastructure, not only domestic softtech.

Why Mirae / Meituan — portfolio fit

Mirae Asset (per Yicai) brings large-check Asia growth capital into hardware platforms. Meituan adds distribution and ops adjacency for robots in logistics and services. Existing Horizon-era shareholders rolling forward keeps continuity after the 2024 spin.

**

Strategic rationale: raise enough to fund multi-tier silicon and software without selling control to a single strategic that would limit OEM customers; keep Meituan as a partner, not the sole buyer.

Competitive map

• NVIDIA Jetson / Isaac — global default outside China.
• Horizon Robotics — parent lineage; ADAS vs robotics focus.
• Humanoid OEMs — customers (UBTECH, FOURIER), not peer chip vendors.

Do not confuse chip shipments with robot units sold.

What remains undisclosed

• Valuation and ownership.
• Absolute revenue and margins behind “several times” growth.
• Exact prior 2026 B-round totals (press conflicts).
• How much of S600 design wins are exclusive vs multi-sourced.

Implication

If the shipment and mass-production claims hold, D-Robotics is a bet that robotics scales like phones once compute is cheap and standardized — and that Asia’s capital stack will keep funding the substrate while Western coverage stays stuck on humanoid demos. The unresolved question is whether Sunrise becomes a default BOM line outside China or remains a regional stack.