A distinguished professor from Zhejiang University is leading her robotics venture toward a public listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking a significant milestone for the academic-turned-entrepreneur. Zhejiang Jiazhi Technology Co., Ltd. has recently re-filed its application with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under Chapter 18C, seeking to list on the Main Board. The company is spearheaded by Rong Xiong, a professor at the College of Control Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University, who is recognized as one of the earliest pioneers in China's robotics arena.

Rong's journey began with a stroke of serendipity. In 2001, it was her mentoring of a group of students that led to the creation of Zhejiang University's first soccer-playing robot, an achievement that would foreshadow decades of championship victories. Notably, in March of this year, the International Federation of Robotics named Rong among the "11 Women Shaping the Future of Robotics 2026," making her the only Chinese honoree on the list. In 2016, together with her laboratory protégés, Rong founded Jiazhi Technology in Hangzhou, and over the past decade, the company has attracted a diverse and substantial roster of investors. As the robotics sector increasingly rushes toward public markets, Jiazhi Technology now stands at the doorstep of a pivotal listing.

Rong's path to entrepreneurship is a story of curiosity and determination. Growing up in Taicang, Jiangsu, her interest in computers sparked at a junior high summer course where she first learned BASIC and played chess against a computer. She enrolled in the Department of Computer Science at Zhejiang University for her undergraduate studies in 1990 and later remained for her master's degree. After graduating in 1997, she stayed at the university as a lab technician in the National Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, where her responsibilities included managing emails, servers, and pages for the lab, interspersed with basic software development.

The pivotal turning point came in 2000 when the then-laboratory director asked if she'd be interested in researching robot soccer, a field gaining traction internationally. Despite lacking a background in mechanics and electrical control—and without a precise concept of robots at the time—Rong accepted the challenge. With no existing team, she posted a recruitment notice on the university's bulletin board, and with three students who joined her from there, they formed the founding core of the university's robotics initiative. At the time, China's robotics industry was nascent, with scant reference materials available. Rong immersed herself in libraries, poring over any research on the subject she could locate, and visited institutions to learn from others' work. A trip to a university in the northeast revealed a system that had taken two years to build but still wobbled when moving in a straight line—a moment that both discouraged and steeled her resolve to create something better.

Just one year later, Rong and her students unveiled Zhejiang University's first-generation FIRA soccer robot, beginning an era of intense competition. Her team went on to win the championship at the small-sized robot soccer World Cup four times, including a dramatic 1-0 victory over Germany's ER-Force team in 2019. Throughout, her story has been interwoven with her students. Their lab functioned like a startup, and students often recall the pungent smell of soldering irons and circuit boards. By 2015, they had developed the first domestically produced trackless navigation AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) for intelligent material handling.

The drive from pure research to practical commercialization was sparked around 2016, as demand for automated material handling in industrial settings began to emerge. Sensing the need to take their technology beyond the lab, Rong and several students established Jiazhi Technology in Hangzhou in July 2016. The initial registered capital was 5 million yuan; Rong held a 49% stake, while Chen Shouxian (now CEO) had 2.4% from the start. Chen, a former student who competed with Rong in robotics contests and earned world championship titles, is part of a core team that largely hails from the same laboratory. Today, the "professor-and-student" dynamic has evolved into a collaborative partnership of co-founders.

Initially, the startup's focus was undecided, with team members exploring applications in hotels and shopping malls in 2017—an approach described by Chen as "using a hammer to look for a nail." They ultimately recognized that the high demands for precision, reliability, and adaptability in industrial settings were a much better fit for their developed mobile robot technology. Rong believed their skills could have been applied to autonomous driving or service robotics, but the strategic decision was to specialize in intelligent industrial logistics, prioritizing its direct value to manufacturing upgrades. To win over a leading domestic display panel maker, the team dedicated months to analyzing the production process, customizing a dedicated robot, and committing to an initial order of around 200 units. This experience shaped Jiazhi's product roadmap in a deeply practical, applied way.

In 2018, their first AMR product, the EMMA V1, achieved commercial deployment, followed by the sprawling outdoor LUNA 2 in 2020, the heavy-duty OMNI and FOLA forklift series in 2021, and an entry into mobile manipulation robots in 2022. In 2025, they launched the NERA-P embodied intelligent movement chassis. Concurrently, significant funding flowed into the company. Key investors have included Yin Ggu, Paladin, Anbotong, Yunyi, Huiyou, Hongrong, and from 2021, ByteDance's QuantumLeap and Lenovo Capital. This was followed by a B+ round led by Xianghe Capital with participation from Shenzhen Capital. Additional backing from Zhongkong, Fangguang, and several local state-run funds has come in subsequent rounds. In early 2026, the company completed a C++ round at a post-money valuation of 2.13 billion yuan.

Its sustained growth is reflected in the financials, which reveal a jump in revenue from 74.95 million yuan in 2023 to 110 million yuan in 2024, and then to 260 million yuan in 2025. For the first half of 2026, revenue rose 25% year-on-year to 169 million yuan, with 891 robots shipped and contracts in hand valued at approximately 500 million yuan. The core business, which was selected in the early days, remains paramount; robot solutions contributed 147 million yuan, or 87.3% of total revenue, in the first half of 2026.

This IPO effort comes at a time of intense activity in the robotics sector. Prominent peers like Huayan Robotics, Estun, Ledong, Xian Gong, and Luoshi have already completed their Hong Kong listings, with Unitree landing on the STAR Market in August, and both Meckma and Udi Robotics completing their listings this fall. The pipeline remains crowded, with over 50 robotics companies waiting at the exchange's gates. Among them, Zhiyuan, Yunshenchu, and Leju have entered the IPO process, while others like Zhuli, Kuwei, Zhi Pinfang, and Zibian have signaled their intentions. A significant number of others have moved into the pre-IPO stages of company restructuring. This wave reflects a broader maturation of China's robotics industry, often described as the "10-year agreement" between academia and industry, which saw a surge of university-lab tech transfers into companies around the mid-2010s.

These companies have become a gravitational pull for VC firms, strategic investors, and local government funds, which are now looking to realize returns on investment. At the same time, capital is rapidly consolidating among the sector's leading companies, while financing for smaller players has slowed. Robotics is notoriously a capital-intensive, long-odds business, and an IPO is a critical avenue not just for R&D funding but also for creating a path to liquidity for early shareholders. For those waiting, the pressure from fundraising, valuation, and cash burn continues to mount. Regulatory pathways such as Chapter 18C in Hong Kong provide much-needed entry points for technology-driven companies that don't quite meet the traditional financial metrics.

Nevertheless, a listing is hardly a guaranteed success. Huayan Robotics saw more than 5,000x oversubscription in its public offering, only to drop below its issue price on its first day. By contrast, Yifei Technology, which attracted no cornerstone investor and lacked a greenshoe mechanism, saw its stock rise 80% on the debut, reaching a market cap of HKD 13 billion. The public market's reception is unpredictable, often rewarding operational metrics such as gross margin, customer concentration, and cash flow cycles, in stark contrast to the capital markets' focus on technology and narrative. As Zhou Zhifeng, a managing partner at Qiming Ventures, has pointed out, the key tests ahead are scalable market adoption, technological convergence, and cost management. He predicts 2027 will be a decisive year for robotics and embodied intelligence firms, marking a period of severe challenge as well as opportunity.