Booster Robotics
Booster Robotics makes robust mid-size humanoids for research and competitions; its T1 is the official platform of RoboCup humanoid leagues.
- Type
- startup
- Headquarters
- Beijing, China
- Founded
- 2023
- Founders
- Cheng Hao
- Status
- active
- Employees (est.)
- n/d
- Disclosed funding
- n/d
- Valuation
- n/d
- Listed
- private
- Website
- booster.tech
What the record says.
Booster Robotics was founded in Beijing in 2023 by Cheng Hao, a Tsinghua automation graduate who had earlier built the Zhaoxi Calendar app, sold it to ByteDance and become a product vice president at Lark. Much of the team comes from Tsinghua's robot control lab and its Hephaestus RoboCup team, which is why the company has aimed its robots at robot football from the start.
The T1, a child-sized biped built to survive falls on a RoboCup pitch, was shown at the World Robot Conference in August 2024. In December 2024 Booster became an official RoboCup partner, and by RoboCup 2026 the company said 38 of 59 teams were using its robots. The smaller K1 followed in October 2025, priced from 5,999 US dollars, and a larger T2 running Nvidia's Thor computer was launched in July 2026.
Unlike most humanoid startups the customers are mostly universities and research groups, not factories. The company reported more than 700 deliveries to over 200 customers by November 2025, with over half going abroad, and said in December 2025 that monthly operating cash flow had turned positive. It closed a Series A+ round in July 2025 and puts total funding at roughly 150 million US dollars as of April 2026. All these figures come from the company itself.
2 humanoids tracked.
Booster K1
K1 is Booster's entry-level education humanoid, under one metre tall and about 15 kg.
Booster T1
Booster T1 is a 1.18 m robust humanoid built for research and robot soccer. Its ability to survive falls made it popular with university RoboCup teams.
Rounds and valuations.
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Series A | n/a | n/d | Beijing company (founded 2023, Booster T1 and K1 research and competition humanoids) reported several hundred million yuan raised across angel, pre-A and A rounds in 2024 and 2025; exact sizes to be verified. |
* reported, not confirmed by the company.
Deposits, lead times and warranties: reading a humanoid order sheet
Of 42 buy records, 2 publish a deposit, 1 a warranty, 1 a shipping cost and none a lead time in weeks. The order sheet for a humanoid is mostly blank, and the blanks are where the money goes.
How a humanoid robot works: actuators, compute, sensors and the model
Of 182 humanoids on record, 178 say what moves the joints and 43 say what computer is inside. The further a layer sits from the metal, the less the maker tells you about it.
Humanoid races, games and fights: what the competitions proved
Our record holds 11 competition events from 1997 to 2025 and 17 machines tied to them. Six can be ordered, three at a public price, and 13 of the 17 carry a teleoperation flag of yes or partial.
Open-source humanoids: what you can actually build
24 of the 182 humanoids on record call themselves open source. 15 publish hardware files and software, 3 name a licence, 12 can be ordered, and none of the four on preorder has any autonomy evidence yet.
Why hands are the hardest part of a humanoid
Of 182 humanoids on record, 96 describe their hands and 13 publish a degrees-of-freedom figure for them. The word dexterous appears 21 times and comes with a number once.
Sources
- 01Booster Robotics official siteBooster Robotics
- 02About Us | Booster RoboticsBooster Robotics
- 03Booster RoboticsBooster Robotics
- 04Booster Robotics: Advancing RoboCup's Vision and Our Path ForwardRoboCup Asia-Pacific 2025