ByteDance, a soap company, and a parts maker just wrote checks into a Chinese home-robot startup that says it's in 500 homes

The home-robot startup 未来不远机器人 (Future Robot) closed a roughly 1 billion yuan (~$140M) Pre-A round in late July, the company's third funding event in six months, per a Sina Tech report by Tang Yitao.

New investors include 汇川产投 (Inovance's venture arm, whose parent mass-produces humanoid parts), 纳爱斯 (Nice Group, the Chinese household-cleaning conglomerate behind 雕牌 and 超能), and a previously unnamed "leading internet company" since identified as ByteDance. Existing backers 真格基金 (ZhenFund) and 博裕创投 (Boyu) led the prior two rounds.

Future Robot says its F2, a second-generation humanoid running the company's in-house WAM "world action model," has reached more than 500 Chinese families for over 50,000 cumulative hours, with a self-reported 96.8% user satisfaction. The only third-party count comes from Pencil News, which reported in March that 5–6 prototypes were rotating between households.

The F2 starts at 36,000 yuan (~$5,000). The cited industry read is that home-market scale waits until 2028 and requires sub-10,000-yuan (~$1,400) hardware. Whether the industrial capital now on the cap table is buying that clock, or the data, is the open question.