The archive · Hardware & Devices · Product decision · 2023–2026
Songyan bets ¥9,998 humanoids can reach homes now; N2 viral, 2,000+ orders in 2025
2023 Tsinghua-dropout startup Songyan bet cheap functional humanoids sell now: N2's marathon 2nd went viral, Bumi launched at ¥9,998, orders passed 2,000.
Songyan Dynamics (松延动力)
What the business is
Songyan Dynamics (松延动力) is a Beijing humanoid-robot startup founded in 2023 that designs and mass-produces affordable biped robots: the ¥39,900 high-dynamic N2 for education, research and exhibitions, the ¥9,998 Bumi family companion, the E1 home robot and Hobbs bionic heads.
Starting capital：Bootstrapped with about ¥1M from family; five funding rounds by April 2025 (Inno Angel, SEE Fund, ShuiMu Tsinghua alumni seed, Beijing Future Science City fund); a 'several-hundred-million RMB' A++ led by Jinpu Capital (Aug 2025) and a ~¥300M Pre-B led by Fangguang Capital (Oct 2025).
How it started
Jiang Zheyuan (born 1998), a Tsinghua electronic-engineering graduate who dropped out of his PhD in its third year, founded Songyan in September 2023 with co-founder and CEO Zhang Shipu, starting on about ¥1M borrowed from their parents in a rented house. His advisor's attempt to talk him out of it led to a dinner with SEE Fund partner Ma Lin, who invested on the spot. The ~70-person team, drawn from Tsinghua, Zhejiang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, spent 2023–2024 building the N-series and E-series bipeds, the Hobbs bionic head and the Dora humanoid.
What happened
In March 2025 Songyan released N2 (1.2m, ~30kg, backflips, running, top speed 3.5 m/s, ¥39,900) and its viral backflip videos began drawing attention; in April its N2 finished second in Beijing's humanoid half-marathon with no human escort, and a marathon-used N2 later sold for ¥56,806 at auction. Deposits passed 1,000 by May 11 — a milestone only Unitree had reached — and orders topped 2,000 with over ¥100M in contracts by June. Funding kept pace: six rounds in under two years, capped by a 'several-hundred-million RMB' A++ led by Jinpu Capital in August 2025, while July 2025 deliveries hit 105 units, up 176% month over month.
How it ended up
On 2025-10-23 Songyan launched Bumi at ¥9,998 — 100+ orders in the first hour and the first 500 units sold out in two days — and closed a ~¥300M Pre-B led by Fangguang Capital, with Vertex Ventures China, CRRC's transformation fund and CCTV's media fund among the backers. It targeted 1,000+ units per month of combined factory capacity by end-2025 across Beijing, Changzhou and Dongguan, betting that revenue, not narrative, decides who survives the humanoid shakeout.
Background
Songyan Dynamics was founded in Beijing in September 2023 by Jiang Zheyuan, a 1998-born Tsinghua EE graduate who dropped out of his PhD in its third year, with co-founder and CEO Zhang Shipu. They started on about ¥1M from their parents in a rented house; an advisor's attempt to talk Jiang out of it led to a dinner with SEE Fund partner Ma Lin, who invested on the spot. The ~70-person team, drawn from Tsinghua, Zhejiang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, bet humanoid robots did not need to wait for AGI: compact, affordable machines sold today could fund the road to bigger ones.
In March 2025 Songyan released N2 — 1.2m tall, ~30kg, backflips, running at up to 3.5 m/s, priced ¥39,900, about 60% under Unitree's ¥99,000 G1 — and backflip videos went viral. In April N2 finished second in Beijing's humanoid half-marathon and a marathon N2 fetched ¥56,806 at auction. Deposits passed 1,000 by May 11 — a milestone only Unitree had reached — and orders topped 2,000 with ¥100M+ in contracts by June. Six funding rounds followed in 18 months, capped by a 'several-hundred-million RMB' A++ led by Jinpu Capital in August 2025, and July deliveries hit 105 units, up 176% MoM.
On 2025-10-23 Songyan launched Bumi at ¥9,998 — 100+ orders in the first hour, first 500 units sold out in two days — and closed a ~¥300M Pre-B led by Fangguang Capital, with Vertex Ventures China, CRRC's transformation fund and CCTV's media fund among backers. It targeted 1,000+ units per month of capacity by end-2025 across Beijing, Changzhou and Dongguan. Founder Jiang framed the strategy as 'development and commercialization in parallel': use revenue and deposits to iterate, at a moment when higher-profile humanoid peers were running out of cash.
What has to be true
- ¥39,900 N2 undercut Unitree's ¥99,000 G1 by about 60% while keeping roughly 15% gross margin — price as a wedge into education, research and exhibition buyers who were already renting robots.
- Real-world proof beat spec sheets: the half-marathon second place and viral backflips produced 1,000+ deposits within a month and 2,000+ orders by June 2025.
- The commercialization-first philosophy — 'commercialization is the only way to survive' — aligned funding with deliveries and turned deposits into working capital.
- Pricing to create a new market (¥9,998 Bumi) instead of fighting incumbents head-on opened a family segment no full-size humanoid could reach.
- Delivery discipline was the binding constraint: 105 units shipped in July 2025 (+176% MoM) and 1,000+/month capacity targets showed the model was production, not PowerPoint.
What can be applied
In hype-heavy categories, price and delivery are the moat: Songyan turned demand — rentals, education, exhibitions — into orders, funding iteration from revenue while peers burned cash on stories.
Aftermath
As of the latest verified reports (2025-10-28), Songyan had closed a ~¥300M Pre-B led by Fangguang Capital, launched Bumi at ¥9,998 with the first 500 units sold out in two days, and was scaling toward 1,000+ units per month of factory capacity by end-2025. Its 2025 milestones — marathon second, 2,000+ orders with ¥100M+ in contracts, and 105 units delivered in July — made it one of the few Chinese humanoid startups shipping in volume. No events after October 2025 are covered in the sources opened for this case.
Sources
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