In the late night of Shenzhen Bay, a capital surge is heading towards a group of young people with an average age of under 30. Xu Huazhe, founder of Starry Sea Technology, stares at the screen showing the recently received $100 million in financing, his fingers trembling slightly—this huge sum, co-led by Meituan Longzhu and Meituan Strategic Investment, comes just 24 hours after Meituan led a $122 million angel round for Itstone Technology. Just two months ago, Meituan had already invested hundreds of millions in Variable Robotics. With just over half of 2025 gone, three major investments totaling over $300 million have all been directed towards the field of embodied intelligence!
This is not a coincidence. Looking at Meituan’s investment landscape, a secret “robot army” has already taken shape: from the delivery sector’s White Rhino and Pudu Technology, to hotel robots from Cloudy Technology and surgical robots from Shurei; from the viral sensation Yushu Technology during the Spring Festival, to the creation of unmanned pharmacies by Galaxy General… Meituan has secretly invested in over 30 robotics companies, effectively acquiring half of the robotics sector.
🔧 Wang Xing’s “Triathlon” Logic
“Business development requires not only software but also hardware!” As early as 2021, Wang Xing identified robotics as a core strategy for Meituan. Four years later, this principle is transforming into a thunderous action:
- Exchanging capital for time: Heavily betting on Itstone Technology, which was established only 5 months ago, even though the latter has not yet released a product;
- Exchanging scenarios for technology: Partnering with Galaxy General to launch the world’s first unmanned pharmacy robot, with mechanical arms accurately retrieving medications, set to expand to 100 stores nationwide by the end of the year;
- Exchanging ecosystems for barriers: Meituan’s Robotics Research Institute is secretly incubating technology, with drone deliveries surpassing 450,000 orders, and autonomous delivery vehicles racing through 4.91 million orders.
🤖 The Strategic Code Behind Three Major Investments
While the outside world focuses on Meituan’s 150 million food delivery orders, Wang Xing’s robotics strategy is advancing rapidly:Starry Sea Technology—a team of 30-year-old geniuses holding the “One Brain, Multiple Forms” core concept, driving multi-form robots with a unified large model. Meituan Longzhu partner Wang Xinyu stated: “We started tracking them in 2023!”Itstone Technology—setting a record for angel round financing in China’s embodied intelligence sector, Meituan made a strong entry as a lead investor for the first time; Variable Robotics—exclusive bet on its “end-to-end large model” technology route, breaking the perception-decision deadlock in robotics.
⚙️ The “Battlefield Test” of the Robot Army
In a 24-hour unmanned pharmacy in Haidian District, Beijing, Galaxy General’s robots are executing Meituan orders:Mechanical arms accurately identify medication specifications, completing sorting and packaging in 3 seconds; on the streets of Shenzhen, Meituan drones navigate buildings, delivering coffee steadily to the helipad of an office building. Meanwhile, in Meituan’s warehouse, the Starry Sea R1 robot is using visual-language-action models to automatically inventory shelves.
Behind these scenes lies a set of disruptive data:
Meituan’s autonomous delivery vehicles have completed a total of 4.91 million orders, with drones surpassing 450,000 orders; invested company Yushu Technology’s valuation has surged by 300%, making it one of Meituan’s most successful technology investments.
💡 Why Robotics?
Wang Xing’s anxiety is hidden in the earnings call: “AI will greatly promote robotics technology!” While food delivery riders’ daily income exceeding a thousand has become a hot topic, Meituan is calculating another set of numbers internally: labor costs are growing at an average of 18% per year, while robot execution efficiency has improved by 400% over three years.
Deeper ambitions lie in reconstructing the retail chain—from drone delivery, warehouse mechanical arms, pharmacy robots to surgical robots, Meituan is stitching together a “human-machine symbiotic” super industrial chain with capital.
