Noetix Robotics — affordable bipedal humanoids from Beijing
Noetix Robotics (松延动力, Songyan Dynamics) is a Beijing-based humanoid robotics startup building low-cost general-purpose humanoid robots for education, research, entertainment, and early commercial deployment. With the N2 — a 118 cm bipedal humanoid priced from approximately US$5,500 — Noetix has become one of the breakout names of the current humanoid robotics and AI boom in China, alongside Unitree, EngineAI, AgiBot, and Booster Robotics.
- Sept 2023Founded
- Beijing, CNHeadquarters
- N2 humanoidLatest flagship
- ~$200M+Funding raised
- ChinaCountry
- PrivateStatus
About Noetix Robotics
Noetix Robotics — legally registered as Noetix Robotics (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. and branded in Chinese as 松延动力 (Songyan Dynamics) — was founded in September 2023 by Jiang Zheyuan, then a 25-year-old doctoral student at Tsinghua University's Department of Electronic Engineering. Jiang dropped out of a PhD program focused on deep reinforcement learning for legged-robot motion control to commercialize the work, assembling a young engineering team drawn largely from Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The company is headquartered in Beijing's Changping District, with additional facilities in Haidian, and today Jiang serves as founder, chairman, and CTO while Zhang Shipu serves as CEO.
The company's public story has moved at extraordinary speed. Reports credit the team with building its first humanoid prototype in roughly 43 days after founding. By early 2025 Noetix appeared at China's CCTV Spring Festival Gala — the most-watched broadcast in the world — as the event's official humanoid robot partner. In April 2025 an N2 unit finished second in the world's first humanoid half-marathon in Beijing, completing the course in about three hours and 37 minutes; the same platform later became one of the first humanoids to perform continuous outdoor backflips, went on to take gold at the World Humanoid Games, and generated hundreds of millions of social-media impressions across Chinese and Western platforms.
Investor interest tracked the demos. Public reports credit Noetix with nine financing rounds since inception, cumulatively estimated at more than US$200 million. The company closed a Series A of roughly RMB 300 million (~US$42 million) in October 2025 led by FG Venture, with participation from Vertex Ventures, CRRC Beijing Transformation and Upgrading Fund, OR Capital, and Everpine Capital. A Pre-B+ of nearly RMB 200 million followed in November 2025, led by CICC Capital. In March 2026 Noetix disclosed a Series B of nearly RMB 1 billion (approximately US$140–145 million) led by Chendao Capital — the industrial investment platform affiliated with battery giant CATL — with additional participation from CAS Investment Management, Jingguosheng Fund, Jiuhe Venture Capital, BAIC Group Industrial Investment, and Unity Ventures.
Jiang has publicly described the ambition of the company in explicitly consumer terms — telling Chinese media that Noetix wants to be "the Xiaomi and Apple of the humanoid robot track." Rather than chasing a factory-first platform first, the team has focused on driving unit cost down aggressively — the Bumi launched at roughly US$1,400 as one of the world's cheapest bipedal humanoids, and the flagship N2 starts near US$5,500 — while iterating on locomotion and embodied AI through education, exhibition, and research channels. That places Noetix in a different competitive lane from higher-priced Western platforms such as Figure AI, 1X, Apptronik, and Tesla Optimus, and in direct competition inside China with Unitree, EngineAI (众擎), AgiBot, and Booster Robotics.
Product lineup: Bumi, N2, and E1
Noetix ships three actively marketed bipedal humanoid platforms today, spanning an unusually wide price range for a single manufacturer: the entry-level Bumi at roughly US$1,400, the athletic mid-tier N2 starting near US$5,500, and the taller embodied-intelligence platform E1, positioned as an upgrade path from the N2.
Bumi (2025) — the entry-level consumer humanoid
Bumi is Noetix's smallest platform and the industry's first widely publicized bipedal humanoid priced below RMB 10,000. It stands approximately 94 cm tall (0.94 m), weighs about 12 kg, and carries 21 degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 4 per arm, 1 waist) driven by 48-volt actuators with a 3.5 Ah quick-swap lithium pack. It is targeted squarely at classroom, developer, and home markets, with an SDK, remote/app control, and a modular five-fingered or "shaping" hand end effector.
N2 (2025) — the athletic flagship
The N2 is Noetix's proof of dynamic engineering and the platform that took the company viral. It is approximately 118 cm tall and 30 kg, with 18 degrees of freedom (5 per leg, 4 per arm), peak knee torque of roughly 150 N·m, and top running speeds of 3.5 m/s — the platform used in the Beijing humanoid half-marathon and the first humanoid publicly demonstrated performing continuous outdoor backflips. An onboard edge-AI compute stack delivering up to 67 TOPS, dual depth cameras, and a quick-swap 48 V / 7 Ah battery give it approximately one to two hours of runtime and support Python, C++, and ROS development APIs.
E1 (2025) — the embodied-intelligence upgrade
E1 (also branded "Geek Pioneer") is Noetix's taller, human-proportioned platform, engineered for organizations that need a larger robot for language-and-vision interaction and staged upper-limb manipulation. It stands approximately 1.36 m tall and roughly 40 kg, ships with a baseline of 21 degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 5 per arm, 1 waist, head/neck DoF), and can be expanded up to 29 DoF with 7-DoF arms and optional dexterous hands. Optional compute modules include the NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano / Orin NX class.
| Model | Year | Height | Weight | Payload | Battery | Actuators | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bumi | 2025 | ~0.94 m | ~12 kg | Light | 48 V / 3.5 Ah, 2–3 hr | 21 DoF BLDC | ~US$1,400 entry humanoid |
| N2 | 2025 | ~1.18 m | ~30 kg | ~5 kg | 48 V / 7 Ah, 1–2 hr | 18 DoF BLDC, 150 N·m peak | Half-marathon 2nd; 3.5 m/s; backflips |
| E1 / E1 EDU | 2025 | ~1.36 m | ~40 kg | ~5 kg | 48 V / 9 Ah, 2–3 hr | 21–29 DoF BLDC | Embodied-intelligence upgrade; Jetson-class compute |
Technology stack
Noetix's engineering thesis is unusual for the humanoid category: rather than target a factory-first, mass-manufactured general-purpose robot from day one, the team has focused on driving unit cost down as aggressively as possible while keeping dynamic locomotion — running, jumping, backflips — competitive with far more expensive platforms. That has forced a tightly integrated stack of in-house mechatronics, edge AI compute, and reinforcement-learning-based motion control.
Perception
The N2 and E1 platforms use dual depth cameras for 3D perception paired with IMU-based inertial sensing, with tactile and force feedback available through the modular hand end effectors. This vision-plus-inertial stack is what enables the platforms' outdoor running, stair climbing, and terrain-adaptive gait — the capabilities that drove Noetix's viral half-marathon and backflip demonstrations.
Motion-control model and edge AI
Locomotion is driven by deep reinforcement learning — the research area Jiang was pursuing at Tsinghua before founding the company. Motion policies are trained in simulation and deployed to run on onboard edge-AI compute rated at up to 67 TOPS on the N2, with optional NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano / Orin NX modules on the E1 for higher-throughput language-and-vision workloads. The company has also announced an OpenHarmony-based robot developer platform and a program giving free units to selected developers, positioning the stack as open enough for research labs and integrators to build on top of.
Actuators, power, and compute
All three platforms use electric brushless DC (BLDC) actuators throughout the body — no hydraulics — with cross-roller and deep-groove ball bearings and cycloidal or planetary reducers on the high-torque joints. The N2's maximum knee torque of 150 N·m is delivered from a 48 V system running from a 7 Ah quick-swap lithium pack; the E1 uses a 48 V / 9 Ah pack for longer sessions. Structurally, the team has emphasized aggressive lightweighting through metal reinforcement in high-load regions and composite materials elsewhere, publicly citing weight reduction of roughly 12 kg on iterations of the platform while preserving core torque envelope.
Power management is the practical ceiling on any small, dynamic humanoid of this class. Delivering 150 N·m of instantaneous knee torque at 48 V draws hundreds of watts per joint into short pulses, which drives the use of high-efficiency wide-bandgap semiconductors (SiC and GaN) in the motor-driver stages and demands tightly matched precision passives on every gate-drive and current-sense channel, together with MLCC capacitor banks on the DC bus. The onboard 48 V battery packs integrate cell balancing, thermal management, and multi-stage protection ICs — subsystems that determine whether a dynamic humanoid can actually deliver its rated one-to-two hours of runtime under sustained load.
Applications and commercial deployments
Noetix has been unusually transparent that education is currently its largest customer segment. Founder Jiang Zheyuan disclosed at the 2025 World Robot Conference that education orders lead all verticals, and the company has publicly detailed classroom and welcome-day rollouts across Chinese primary and secondary schools. Beyond that, Noetix's viral run through exhibition and entertainment channels has translated into a broadening pipeline of research and early commercial buyers:
- Education (largest segment). N2, E1, and Bumi units have been deployed across Chinese K-12 schools and universities for STEM curricula, welcome ceremonies, and robotics competitions, with Noetix publicly stating that classroom deployments now lead all customer verticals.
- Entertainment and exhibition (CCTV Spring Festival Gala). Noetix served as the official humanoid robot partner of China's 2025 Spring Festival Gala — the most-watched broadcast on Earth — and its N2 units danced before an estimated 677 million viewers, generating unprecedented consumer exposure for a bipedal humanoid platform.
- Research and developer programs. An OpenHarmony-based developer platform, free-unit programs for selected labs, and open Python / C++ / ROS APIs have positioned the N2 in particular as a research workhorse for universities and integrators working on locomotion and embodied AI.
- Early commercial and overseas pilots. Noetix has publicly said it targets delivering thousands of robots per year and is actively pursuing overseas markets, with dealer listings appearing across Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and North America.
The robotics supply chain — where Hybrid Electronics fits in
A modern humanoid robot is one of the most component-dense products ever built. A single Noetix-class platform depends on thousands of individual electronic components: precision BLDC motor drivers, high-torque servo modules, IMUs and 6-DoF force-torque sensors, LiDAR and time-of-flight modules, GPU compute boards such as NVIDIA Jetson-class modules, battery-management ICs, wide-bandgap SiC/GaN power semiconductors, high-speed board-to-board connectors, precision resistors, and thousands of MLCC capacitors distributed across every power and signal rail.
Building that kind of hardware puts enormous pressure on the electronic-components supply chain. Prototype pilots and low-volume production runs frequently hit allocation, EOL notices, and long lead times on the exact parts they need, and R&D and field-service teams routinely have to support older platforms that use semiconductors no longer in mainstream distribution. During the current humanoid robotics and general-purpose robot AI boom, this pressure is amplified: dozens of well-funded teams — Chinese and Western alike — are chasing the same short list of high-torque BLDC drivers, precision IMUs, GPU compute modules, and automotive-grade power semiconductors, and franchise stock on many key parts is now measured in months of lead time rather than weeks.
Hybrid Electronics has been sourcing electronic components for industrial and embedded systems since 1995. For robotics teams — humanoid, mobile, industrial, and research — we specialize in finding the parts you need when mainstream distribution can't:
Obsolete and end-of-life parts
Legacy semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives that are no longer in mainstream distribution — the parts that keep older platforms running during transitions to newer hardware, and the long-tail items that block a BOM from closing.
Allocated and hard-to-find active parts
High-torque BLDC motor drivers, IMUs and MEMS sensors, SiC/GaN power devices, GPU compute modules, precision resistors, and MLCC capacitors caught in allocation or long-lead times. Send us a BOM or a shortage list — we'll confirm what we can source and at what lead time.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Noetix Robotics?
Noetix Robotics (松延动力 / Songyan Dynamics) was founded in September 2023 by Jiang Zheyuan, a 25-year-old Tsinghua University doctoral student who dropped out of his PhD program in deep reinforcement learning for legged robots to start the company. Jiang remains founder, chairman, and CTO; Zhang Shipu serves as CEO. The company is headquartered in Changping District, Beijing.
What is the Noetix N2?
The N2 is Noetix Robotics' flagship bipedal humanoid: approximately 118 cm tall, 30 kg, with 18 degrees of freedom, 150 N·m peak knee torque, and running speeds up to 3.5 m/s. It became internationally recognized after finishing second in the world's first humanoid half-marathon in Beijing in April 2025 and for viral demonstrations of continuous outdoor backflips. Priced from approximately ¥39,900 (about US$5,500), it is one of the most affordable full-motion bipedal humanoids commercially available.
Where are Noetix robots deployed commercially?
Noetix has publicly stated that education is currently its largest customer segment, with N2 units deployed in Chinese K-12 schools and universities for STEM curricula and welcome-day demonstrations. Additional deployments include exhibition and entertainment (the company was the official humanoid partner of CCTV's 2025 Spring Festival Gala), research labs, and early commercial and industrial pilots. Noetix has said it targets delivering thousands of robots per year and is expanding to overseas markets.
How much has Noetix Robotics raised?
Public reports credit Noetix Robotics with nine financing rounds since inception, cumulatively estimated at more than US$200 million. The largest disclosed round is a Series B of nearly RMB 1 billion (approximately US$140–145 million) closed in March 2026, led by Chendao Capital — the industrial investment arm of battery maker CATL — with participation from CAS Investment, Jingguosheng Fund, Jiuhe Venture Capital, and Unity Ventures. Prior investors include FG Venture, Vertex Ventures, CICC Capital, BAIC Group Industrial Investment, and the Beijing Robot Industry Development Investment Fund.
Is Hybrid Electronics affiliated with Noetix Robotics?
No. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company. We are not a distributor, reseller, or partner of Noetix Robotics. All trademarks are property of their respective owners. Hybrid supports robotics developers by sourcing obsolete, allocated, and hard-to-find semiconductors, sensors, connectors, and passives for R&D, prototype, and low-volume production builds.
Can Hybrid help with components for humanoid robotics builds?
Yes. We regularly support R&D and integrator teams with hard-to-find semiconductors, BLDC motor-driver ICs, IMUs and other MEMS sensors, connectors, SiC/GaN power devices, and precision passives for the industrial and embedded boards used in robotics platforms. Send us a BOM or a short list of shortages and we'll confirm availability and pricing.
Trademark and affiliation notice. Noetix Robotics®, 松延动力 (Songyan Dynamics), Bumi, N2, and E1 are trademarks of Noetix Robotics (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. Hybrid Electronics is an independent electronic-components sourcing company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by Noetix Robotics (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. All information on this page is compiled from public sources for educational and reference purposes.