PHYMI, a nascent embodied artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model startup, has raised almost $100 million in a seed financing led by IDG Capital, the company said in an official WeChat post on Wednesday (September 9). Yunqi Partners, FOSUN RZ Capital and Glory Ventures participated in the round alongside publicly listed ride‑hailing giant Didi Global and 3D LiDAR maker Hesai Group.
Founded earlier in 2026, PHYMI is led by founder and CEO Liu Nianqiu. Liu previously spent more than seven years at Shenzhen‑based DeepRoute.ai as a vice president and partner, where he helped deploy map‑free autonomous driving solutions and supported the company’s technical transition toward end‑to‑end and Vision‑Language‑Action (VLA) architectures. Earlier in his career, Liu worked as a senior engineer at Intel and was a serial entrepreneur in the smart hardware sector.
PHYMI’s mission and technology
PHYMI says it aims to bridge the gap between software‑bound AI capabilities and the complex physical world by building what it calls “Physical Agents.” These embodied AI systems are intended to combine cognitive reasoning with physical actions to perceive, navigate and manipulate across open and dynamic real‑world environments, the company stated.
Funding use and next steps
Following the seed round, PHYMI plans to accelerate R&D on its core Physical Agent AI offerings, build real‑world dynamic data systems, advance product engineering and deployment, and expand the team, according to the announcement.
