Robot Era Raises $366M as STAR1 Humanoids Deploy Across SF Express Logistics Centers

<p>Robot Era (Star Dynamics), a Beijing-based humanoid robotics company founded in 2023 and incubated at Tsinghua University, has raised approximately $366 million (CNY 2.5 billion) across two funding rounds in just two months. The latest round was led by SF Express, China's largest private logistics operator, with backing from Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and other institutional investors.</p><p>The company has deployed its STAR1 humanoid robots across more than 10 logistics centers operated by China Post and SF Express, spanning northern, eastern, and southern China. In some facilities, the robots have reached 85% of human-level efficiency while operating 24/7.</p><p>In Q2 2026, Robot Era initiated batch deliveries at the thousand-robot scale, claiming a 300% growth rate. The STAR1 features a bipedal form factor with 3-degree-of-freedom waist, 2.1-meter reach envelope, and 12-DOF five-fingered hands designed for manipulating diverse products.</p><p>The company's ERA-42 model, a proprietary Vision-Language-Action (VLA) system, enables the robot to interpret visual data and language commands to dynamically perform picking, scanning, and boxing tasks without explicit programming for every item. Robot Era claims this is the world's first end-to-end VLA system deployed in a live logistics application.</p>