While everyone in AI has been arguing about chatbots, the money has quietly started flowing into the layer underneath the robot boom: the chips. On September 17, a Shenzhen-based company called D-Robotics announced a $400 million Series C — one of the largest funding rounds ever for a company dedicated purely to robotics semiconductors. If humanoid robots are going to happen at scale, someone has to build their brains. Investors just bet serious money that this is the someone.
01.Who is D-Robotics?
The company was spun off from Horizon Robotics — the Chinese autonomous-driving chipmaker — in early 2024, with a single mandate: design computing silicon for AI-powered robots. It doesn't build robots. It builds the processors inside them, along with RDK developer kits and software. The scale is real: cumulative shipments of its Sunrise chip family have crossed 8 million units, more than 500 universities and over 100,000 developers across 20-plus countries build on its platform, and revenue grew several-fold year-over-year in the first half of 2026, per the company's announcement. The new round was led by Mirae Asset, the South Korean financial conglomerate, with participation from Meituan's strategic investment arm, several Chinese government-backed platforms and existing shareholders — bringing total disclosed funding to roughly $770 million in about 26 months.
02.A brain and a cerebellum
The flagship product, the Sunrise S600 launched in November 2025, is a genuinely clever piece of engineering. It uses what the company calls a "Brain-Cerebellum" architecture: an 18-core ARM CPU cluster acts as the brain, running the large language and vision models that let a robot understand what it's looking at, while a separate neural accelerator acts as the cerebellum, handling the split-second, high-frequency motor commands that keep a robot standing and stable. Anyone who has watched a humanoid freeze mid-step knows why separating "thinking" from "balancing" matters. Within six months of launch, the S600 was adopted by more than 20 robot makers — UBTECH, Fourier, Booster Robotics, Astribot, TARS, Spirit AI and others — with most already in mass production.
03.The catch: the US just banned its customers
Here's the twist nobody in this story can ignore. On July 28, the US Federal Communications Commission added humanoid and quadruped robots to its Covered List — effectively banning new Chinese-made robots from the US market, on the grounds that connected robots could be used to surveil or be remotely commandeered. Nearly every one of D-Robotics' named S600 customers is a Chinese manufacturer. So the company just raised $400 million to scale the chip layer of a robot market that its home ecosystem is increasingly locked out of in the US. The ban doesn't block the chips themselves — an American company could still assemble a US-built robot around Sunrise silicon — but with Washington actively de-risking Chinese components out of tech supply chains, that's a hard sell. The likely outcome: D-Robotics dominates the Chinese and broader Asian robot boom, while Nvidia's Jetson line powers the Western one.
04.Why the stakes are enormous
TechTimes notes Morgan Stanley projects the humanoid robot semiconductor market alone could reach $305 billion. That's chip-layer money, phone-industry money. Two supply chains are being built for the same future — one anchored in Shenzhen, one in Silicon Valley — and India is watching from the middle. We've covered humanoid progress before, like Figure's Helix 2.5 doing housework in homes it has never seen; D-Robotics is the less glamorous but arguably more decisive part of the same story. Whoever controls the compute controls the pace.
05.The India angle
So where does India fit? Directly, for once. The US-China split in robotics silicon is exactly the kind of gap a third ecosystem can grow into — and India is already pushing hard on semiconductor design under its Semicon programme. Indian chip design teams, robotics startups in Bengaluru and Chennai, and the deep-tech funds backing them are all now operating in a world where buyers actively want non-Chinese, non-American alternatives. A robotics chip company from India just got a much bigger addressable argument. It also doesn't hurt that D-Robotics' developer-kit strategy — 100,000 developers across 20-plus countries — shows how a chip company actually wins: by building the community first. If you're an engineer wondering which wave to ride after AI software, robotics silicon is shaping up as the deep one. And if you're building AI systems today, our GPT-6 Astra — Zero to Hero Guide covers the AI foundations — prompting, agents, computer use — that robotics stacks are increasingly built on.
Key Takeaways
- D-Robotics closed a $400M Series C led by Mirae Asset, with Meituan participating — total funding ~$770M
- Over 8 million Sunrise chips shipped; the S600 is in 20+ robot makers' products, most in mass production
- Its "Brain-Cerebellum" design separates AI reasoning from real-time motor control on one chip
- The US FCC's July ban blocks new Chinese humanoid robot imports, boxing its customer base out of the US
- Morgan Stanley sees the humanoid chip market reaching $305B — a two-camp, US-vs-China race that India can arbitrage
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is D-Robotics?
D-Robotics is a Shenzhen-based startup spun off from autonomous-driving chipmaker Horizon Robotics in early 2024 with a single mandate: designing computing silicon for AI-powered robots. It does not build robots — it builds the processors inside them, along with RDK developer kits and software. Its Sunrise chip family has shipped over 8 million units, with more than 500 universities and 100,000 developers across 20-plus countries building on the platform.
What is the Sunrise S600 chip?
The flagship S600, launched in November 2025, uses a "Brain-Cerebellum" architecture: an 18-core ARM CPU cluster acts as the brain, running the large language and vision models that let a robot understand what it is looking at, while a separate neural accelerator handles the split-second, high-frequency motor commands that keep it standing. Within six months of launch it was adopted by more than 20 robot makers, including UBTECH, Fourier, Booster Robotics, Astribot, TARS and Spirit AI.
What is the $400M round, and how does the US ban affect it?
D-Robotics closed a $400 million Series C on September 17, led by South Korea's Mirae Asset with Meituan participating, bringing total disclosed funding to roughly $770 million in about 26 months. The catch: on July 28 the US FCC added humanoid and quadruped robots to its Covered List, effectively banning new Chinese-made robots from the US market — nearly all of D-Robotics' named S600 customers are Chinese manufacturers. The ban does not block the chips themselves, so D-Robotics is likely to dominate the Chinese and broader Asian robot boom while Nvidia's Jetson line powers the Western one.
What This Means for You
You're probably not building robot chips. But if you're in tech in India, this story matters for two reasons. First, it confirms that the AI wave is hardening into hardware — agents need bodies, and bodies need silicon, which means embedded systems and robotics skills are about to get scarce and expensive. Second, the geopolitics of that hardware is splitting into camps, and India is one of the few places both camps want to sell to. For students and professionals, the practical move is the same as it's been all year: get fluent in AI systems first — prompting, agents, cost control — because every layer above the silicon is being rebuilt around them. Our GPT-6 Astra — Zero to Hero Guide is the fastest way to do that.
By the way, if terms like agents and computer use still feel fuzzy, our GPT-6 Astra guide for beginners explains them all without the jargon.