In September this year, a company that does not manufacture complete robots went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, successfully claiming the title of the "first embodied AI eyes, brain, and hands stock."
The company is named Mech-Mind Robotics (Stock Code: 09615.HK), transliterated from "Mech-Mind," which means the robot's brain.
Before ringing the bell, Mech-Mind had already been deeply engaged in this niche track for a full decade. Over these ten years, it completed 11 rounds of financing with a cumulative total of over CNY 2 billion, backed by renowned institutions such as Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Meituan, Intel Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners. To date, the company's products are sold to nearly 50 countries and regions worldwide, with nearly 30,000 units deployed globally, maintaining the top global market share for four consecutive years.
Recently, Zhangtongshe interviewed Shao Tianlan, founder and CEO of Mech-Mind, at the CIIF. How did a company that does not build complete robots manage to become the global number one?
By the time this conversation began, it was already 5 PM. Throughout the day, Shao Tianlan was on the front line, wearing an audio guide to host wave after wave of clients who traveled from all over the world. He is the company's number one salesperson and customer service representative.
A Decade of Entrepreneurship by Tsinghua Alumni Creating the World's No. 1 Embodied AI "Eyes, Brain, and Hands"
Amid the fierce competition in the embodied AI track, Mech-Mind stands out as a unique company.
Most of the currently popular robotics companies focus on building robot bodies, ranging from humanoid and quadruped robots to robotic arms, and the list goes on. Mech-Mind, however, has taken a completely different path: they do not build complete robots, but only the "eyes, brain, and hands" of robots.
This choice stems from an observation Shao Tianlan made in Germany. After graduating from the School of Software at Tsinghua University, he went to the Technical University of Munich to pursue a master's degree in robotics. In Germany, he once saw a robot executing a simple command, which required a team of multiple people to program for a week or two. "They can only run according to preset programs and go on strike at the slightest change."
This led Shao Tianlan to reflect that perhaps the mechanical body is not what constrains robot applications. On the contrary, if robots are to truly enter factories, they must be equipped with perception, comprehension, and planning capabilities.
In the summer of 2016, 27-year-old Shao Tianlan, together with two other Tsinghua alumni, officially founded Mech-Mind.
From the very first day of its establishment, Mech-Mind has focused on the research of embodied AI "eyes, brain, and hands." Over the next decade, from the first line of code to the first equipment entering the factory, and from the first customer to the 100th Fortune Global 500 company, the direction has never deviated.
Before starting the business, Shao Tianlan spent three months intensively visiting factories and ultimately decided to start from the handling scenario. But turning scenarios into products was harder than imagined. Take a brick factory as an example: the workshop is hot and filled with dust, and moving bricks is genuinely heavy manual labor. For robots to replace humans, they must see the position and shape of the bricks clearly and decide on their own where to grab and how to place them. From imaging to recognition and then to planning, Mech-Mind began to build every link from scratch.
This formed the starting point of Mech-Mind's "eyes, brain, and hands" system.
The so-called "eyes" refer to the Mech-Eye series of industrial-grade 3D cameras; the "brain" is the algorithm and software platform centered on the Mech-GPT multimodal large model; and the "hands" are the Mech-Hand bionic multi-finger dexterous hands. This system can be embedded in traditional industrial robotic arms, and is also compatible with collaborative robots, dual-arm robots, and even humanoid robots.
At the CIIF, Mech-Mind's booth practically brought the most difficult tasks from the factory floor. Robotic arms sorting gears, humanoid robots moving material baskets, and cameras performing flying-shot inspections span typical industrial embodied AI scenarios such as intelligent grasping, sorting, assembly, glue dispensing, and quality inspection. Under complex working conditions such as transparent goods, highly reflective metals, and mixed-line production with massive SKUs, Mech-Mind has achieved near-zero error rates.
Currently, this system has been deployed in nearly 30,000 units, spanning over a dozen industries including automotive, new energy, 3C electronics, and logistics. It serves more than 1,600 customers, including over 100 Fortune Global 500 companies such as CATL, BYD, Midea, and Foxconn, with a repurchase rate as high as 93.9% in the first half of 2026. Calculated by shipment volume in 2025, Mech-Mind ranks first in the global AI + 3D vision-guided general intelligent robot components market, more than the combined total of the four competitors behind it.
Thus, Mech-Mind has formed a positive flywheel: the more they sell, the lower the comprehensive cost, the more reasonable the R&D amortization, the more customer feedback they receive, and the faster the product iteration. This also means that as the scale advantage continues to reinforce itself, the barriers Mech-Mind has built in terms of shipment volume, data, and cost are almost insurmountable for latecomers.
"In our industry, only giants can survive," Shao Tianlan said with certainty.
Establishing a Foothold in Jiading, Shanghai and Expanding to Nearly 50 Countries and Regions Globally
Being a giant means standing in the place where the industry is most concentrated.
In 2020, Mech-Mind officially established a foothold in Jiading and moved into the Beihongqiao Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park.
In Shao Tianlan's view, the entire Shanghai region, and even the broader East China area, is one of the regions with the most robust demand for robots globally. Jiading, as a highland for Shanghai's automotive industry, has direct and intensive demand for "AI + 3D" vision robots in automotive manufacturing, and its intelligent manufacturing foundation highly aligns with the company's direction. In addition, the area offers international talent, diversified scenarios, and upstream and downstream partners.
Subsequent developments have validated this judgment. Shao Tianlan recalled that when they first arrived, the Jiading subsidiary had only a few people and an office space of just over 100 square meters. Today, it has become a sales and delivery center with over 5,000 square meters and more than 200 employees. Meanwhile, around Mech-Mind, upstream optical component suppliers, downstream integrators, and application service providers have gradually gathered, forming an industrial ecosystem centered on robot vision in Jiading. The years since establishing in Jiading have precisely been the period of fastest global expansion for Mech-Mind.
Shao Tianlan said that Mech-Mind was destined for globalization from its inception. First, due to market size. Although China is the world's largest demander of robots, two-thirds of manufacturing and 70% to 80% of logistics are still overseas. If Mech-Mind only focused on the Chinese market, it would only have one-third of the pie. Second, demand convergence. Whether in manufacturing or logistics, global application scenarios are highly unified. Just as mobile phones and batteries can be sold worldwide, industrial robot components will certainly have a scaled replication effect.
Relying on Jiading's locational advantages and industrial foundation, Mech-Mind has pushed its products into the global market.
But only after going global did they realize what tests the products had to withstand. On the one hand, overseas customers have extremely high quality requirements. "Once, the color of the cables configured with our product changed slightly, from deep black to light black, and the customer emailed to ask what was going on." On the other hand, overseas engineers are scarce and expensive, making it almost impossible to provide close-up service. Therefore, Mech-Mind's products must be powerful, comprehensively reliable, and accompanied by highly complete documentation and training. These experiences, in turn, have forced the maturity of the products.
Two robots equipped with Mech-Mind's "eyes, brain, and hands" are collaboratively loading materials
As the products matured, the market naturally provided returns. Currently, the company has set up offices in Munich, Tokyo, Detroit, Seoul, and other places, with 17 business centers in major global markets, covering nearly 50 countries and regions. Overseas revenue increased from CNY 58.6 million in 2023 to CNY 196 million in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 82.7%. In the full year of 2025, the proportion of Mech-Mind's overseas revenue exceeded half for the first time, reaching 50.3%. In the first half of 2026, its overseas revenue was approximately CNY 100 million, a year-on-year increase of 68.3%.
At this point, Mech-Mind has successfully sold a set of standard products to the whole world. The path of a giant is entering a prime stage.
High Growth and High Gross Margin: Globalization Enters the Harvest Period
September 1, 2026, marked an important moment in the history of Mech-Mind.
On this day, Mech-Mind rang the bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, raising HKD 2.3 billion and securing cornerstone investments from nine top global institutions, including Baillie Gifford, Taikang, and BYD.
After the listing, Shao Tianlan set the tone for the company as full-speed ahead. "The listing has brought us very abundant resources, which can support us in expanding faster in core technologies, product lines, application scenarios, and globalization. At the same time, as a listed company, there are also higher requirements for governance, information disclosure, and investor returns."
Full-speed ahead is first reflected in R&D investment. In the first half of this year, Mech-Mind's R&D investment reached CNY 80.1 million, a year-on-year increase of 72.9%.
Alongside the full-speed-ahead Mech-Mind is a CEO who is equally unstoppable. Shao Tianlan still insists on doing many things that "seem like they shouldn't be done by a CEO." He persists in reading papers, communicating closely with researchers, observing application scenarios, and listening to customer feedback. As the top leader of the company, he values first-hand understanding of technology, scenarios, and customers. Only by maintaining this high-frequency input can the company avoid falling behind and make correct judgments at critical nodes.
Notably, Mech-Mind's first semi-annual report after listing shows that the company's revenue in the first half of 2026 was CNY 237 million, a 54.7% increase from CNY 153 million in the same period last year; gross profit was CNY 154 million, a year-on-year increase of 63.6%, with the gross margin rising from 61.4% in the same period last year to 65.0%. Looking at a longer timeline, from 2023 to 2025, the company's revenue grew from CNY 181 million to CNY 389 million, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.6%, while the gross margin climbed all the way from 39.1% to 64.6%, continuously approaching the level of SaaS companies. In addition, its adjusted loss narrowed from CNY 55.8 million in the same period last year to CNY 52.5 million. The more invested in R&D, the smaller the loss, which is quite rare among hard-tech companies.
The precision requirement for FPC flexible cable array insertion is extremely high, and Mech-Mind has achieved an insertion success rate of over 99.7%
Amid the current good business momentum, Shao Tianlan remains prudent. In his view, the humanoid robot boom in the past two years has obscured the true industrial pain points—the industry is generally competing on the robot body, but what robots truly lack is the ability to solve problems autonomously. Whether it is industrial robotic arms, collaborative robots, or humanoid robots, they all need to possess the capabilities of perception, decision-making, and execution.
More than a decade has passed in the blink of an eye, and Shao Tianlan has never changed his original aspiration. It is just that the young man who was mesmerized watching robots at the Technical University of Munich probably never imagined that one day the robot products he made would spread across the globe.
From Jiading to 50 countries and regions, the globalization chapter of Mech-Mind has perhaps just begun.
Text | Na Yun Editor | Yi Da