Lingyan raises tens of millions of yuan for cable-driven robot faces with 32 degrees of freedom

Lingyan Technology, a Hangzhou startup that builds bionic faces for robots, has raised tens of millions of yuan across seed and seed+ rounds, 36Kr reported on Oct 25. Yingdong Capital and Zhejiang Torch Center backed the seed round; Addor Capital, Plum Ventures and Linglu Capital joined the seed+, and Yingdong put in more money.

Lingyan is betting that humanoid robot makers will buy the face the way they already buy joints and hands. Its edge is borrowed parts. Founder and CEO Zhao Changyi, a Jilin University PhD born after 2000, told 36Kr the cable drive comes from sister company Heiman Technology's dexterous hands, which go to Leju Robotics, and the micro motor modules from QuanZhiBo's robot joints. All three companies came out of the same Jilin University bionics lab, with Professor Liu Chunbao as chief scientist at all three. Addor says it had already invested in QuanZhiBo and Heiman.

Most rivals use linkages, which Zhao says are noisy and bulky. Lingyan says cables give its faces 32 degrees of freedom, the most among Chinese peers, and that it runs its expression model on the device rather than on an external server.

Robot makers are not its main customers yet. Lingyan, founded in June 2026, expects direct sales and IP customization to bring in about 90% of this year's revenue and humanoid supply to reach about half next year. Its next product is a 43-degree-of-freedom all-cable face, 46 with the neck.