Dataa Robotics

Dataa Robotics started life in March 2015 as CloudMinds, founded by Bill Huang (Huang Xiaoqing) with Robert Zhang. Its pitch was cloud robotics: thin robots controlled by a remote brain over mobile networks. Early backers were SoftBank, Foxconn, Walden and Keytone, and Jiemian puts total money raised over the company's life at CNY 5.4 billion, roughly USD 745 million, making it one of China's best-funded robot startups of its era. It moved its headquarters from Beijing to Shanghai around 2020.

The flagship robot was Ginger (XR-1), a wheeled service humanoid with dexterous hands shown in 2018 and 2019 and sold at more than CNY 200,000 for reception, retail and exhibition work; Cloud Ginger 2.0 and a bipedal XR4 followed in 2022 and 2023, along with the HARIX robot operating system and a RobotGPT model. In July 2019 CloudMinds postponed a USD 500 million NYSE listing, and in May 2020 the US Commerce Department put it on the Entity List, ending the US route. A 2023 Hong Kong listing plan also stalled.

By 2024 the money had run out. In March 2025 Jiemian reported wages withheld since early 2024, layoffs, more than 20 lawsuits, a CNY 21.76 million enforcement order and a vacated headquarters, weeks after a partnership signing with Xiamen Solex. The company is effectively dormant.