Booming Capital Layout: China’s Tactile Sensing Sector Enters a Peak Period in 2025
Since 2025, China’s tactile sensing sector has entered a boom period with intensive capital layout: enterprises such as Tashan Technology, Natum Intelligent, Moliang Technology, Yuansheng Technology, and Pacini Sensing have successively completed multiple rounds of financing, driving up the valuation of the sector.
2025 Tactile Sensing Sector Boom: XENSE Secures 100-Million-Yuan Pre-A Round
Against this backdrop, XENSE ROBOTICS, a leading enterprise in the industry, announced another financing success in October—it secured a 100-million-yuan-level Pre-A round of financing, marking its third round of capital injection within the year. This round was led by Futen Capital (Shanghai Embodied Intelligence Fund), with participation from industrial investors including Li Auto and market-oriented institutions such as Binfu Capital and Keshi Capital. Existing shareholders like Hillhouse Ventures, Yuanhe Origin, and Gobi Partners also chose to increase their investments. These intensive capital moves not only confirm the high growth potential of the sector but also highlight XENSE ROBOTICS’ core competitiveness in the field of tactile sensing.
XENSE’s Rapid Rise: Elite Team and World-Class Technical Pedigree
Founded in May 2024 and headquartered in Shanghai, XENSE ROBOTICS has rapidly emerged as a benchmark in the sector despite operating for less than one and a half years. Its core team comprises technical elites from top domestic and international universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and University College London (UCL).
The founder, Ma Daolin, studied under Alberto Rodriguez, head of Robot Behavior at Boston Dynamics, and once won the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) for his groundbreaking research—making him one of the few Chinese recipients of this prestigious award. This strong technical foundation has laid the groundwork for XENSE’s subsequent technological breakthroughs.
Strategic Value of Tactile Sensing: XENSE’s Industry-Leading Product Advantages
The intensive capital layout in the tactile sensing sector stems from its strategic value amid the wave of embodied intelligence. Currently, the robotics industry is upgrading from “vision-dominated” to “multimodal perception”; solutions relying solely on vision are limited in precision assembly and flexible grasping, while tactile technology is the key to breaking this bottleneck.
Tactile Sensing Market Prospects: From Billions to Trillion-Dollar Scale
According to VMR data, the global tactile sensor market exceeded USD 15 billion in 2024 and is expected to surpass USD 35 billion in the next few years, potentially reaching the trillion-dollar level with the widespread implementation of embodied intelligence.
Based on profound expertise in mechanics and manipulation, Ma Daolin pioneered the global path of “constructing spatial perception through touch” for robotic operation. XENSE’s independently developed multimodal visual-tactile sensors address traditional pain points (low resolution, poor durability, high costs) and outperform capacitive, resistive, and Hall-effect sensors in resolution, anti-interference, fusion, and dynamic response. Key indicators include micron-level spatial resolution, millinewton-level force accuracy, millions of press tests for durability, 4 cm³ minimum volume, 3-millisecond delay, and 150 Hz sampling frequency. It also offers software/tools that cut customers’ data acquisition costs by 95%.
Market Penetration & Future Layout: From Li Auto Cooperation to “Tactile Cloud” Ecosystem
XENSE’s technological advantages have translated into market competitiveness: it has built a comprehensive product matrix (sensors, data acquisition systems, simulators, actuators, control systems) and an end-to-end “perception-to-decision” solution. Its products are used by Zhiyuan, Google, Zibianliang, and other enterprises, with scenario-based cooperation with CATL, Li Auto, and Haier; it also won the 2025 L’Oréal China BigBang Co-creation Project Outstanding Enterprise award.Notably, in the sanitary ware manufacturing field, a leading domestic bathroom brand has integrated XENSE’s multimodal visual-tactile sensors into its Bathroom faucet assembling machine—a critical piece of equipment that handles fine operations like valve core installation, aerator pressing, and handle alignment. Traditional assembling machines often struggled with defects: loose valve cores caused post-installation water leakage, while over-pressing aerators led to plastic deformation, resulting in a 90% average qualification rate. XENSE’s sensors solve this by using micron-level spatial resolution to calibrate part alignment in real time and maintaining 5-10 millinewton-level force control during pressing—lifting the qualification rate to 99.2% and reducing rework costs by over 35%.
Li Auto’s participation in this round is particularly significant: as an investor with a “Spatial Robotics” department and AGI terminal ambitions, it will provide XENSE with automotive manufacturing resources and drive tactile technology in industrial scenarios like interactive perception and quality inspection. For fund use, XENSE will focus on R&D, product iteration, team expansion, and market development.
XENSE’s Long-Term Vision: Building a “Tactile Cloud” Competitive Moat
In the long run, XENSE plans to build a “Tactile Cloud” ecological platform based on its core layout of “sensors + data acquisition systems + simulators.” By formulating unified data standards and interfaces, the company aims to establish a unique competitive moat in the tactile sensing sector.
XENSE’s three rounds of financing in a year reflect the domestic tactile sensing sector’s shift from concept to value realization. With enterprises like XENSE driving innovation and scenario penetration, domestic tactile sensing is poised to lead globally in the embodied intelligence wave.
