Global Sales No.1, Hypershell Raises $120 Million

 A post-90s founder creates a global hit.

*Ventures has learned exclusively that today (May 18), consumer exoskeleton startup Hypershell announced the completion of a $50 million Series B+ extension round, led by Ant Group and Meituan Longzhu, with participation from Sofina and Granite Asia. Gaochu Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor.*

With this, Hypershell’s total Series B funding reaches $120 million.

Sun Kuan, founder of Hypershell, is a post-90s engineering graduate. In 2021, as artificial intelligence and robotics technologies began a wave of transformation, instead of chasing the red-hot humanoid robot trend, he took a different path – combining these two cutting-edge technologies with human ergonomics to enhance human capability through exoskeleton robots. Thus, Hypershell was born.

In just a few years, Hypershell has become the world’s No.1 consumer exoskeleton by sales, backed by a stellar lineup of investors: IDG Capital, Sequoia China, Monolith, 5Y Capital, Guanghe Capital, Oasis Capital, Dexun Investment, and others. Perhaps the future of “Iron Man for everyone” is not far off.

Investors scramble for a piece, a post-90s founder skyrockets to fame

“While humanoid robots seek to replace humans, we choose to augment them.” In the crowded embodied AI, Sun Kuan chose a less traveled path – exoskeletons.

The seed was planted early. Born in 1991, Sun grew up on works like Ghost in the Shell and Iron Man. He is a typical tech geek: science and engineering, started coding in middle school, participated in various robotics competitions in college, loved tinkering in labs to understand the technology behind complex projects. In graduate school, he specialized in exoskeleton simulation and pushed the limits of simulation accuracy in the field.

During that time, Sun worked at a renowned robotics company, rising from management trainee to product manager, and also led the creation of the world’s first modular PC brand. Robotics hardware management, exoskeleton academic research, and overseas hardware brand building – these experiences combined laid the groundwork for his later entrepreneurial venture.

In 2021, he decided to do something that seemed insane at the time: turn the bulky, expensive exoskeleton, which had only existed in medical rehabilitation and industrial settings, into a consumer product that ordinary people would want to buy and use daily. Hypershell was born.

The company name derives from the “Shell” in Ghost in the Shell – beyond the soul, both body and clothing are shells. Sun’s extreme product philosophy is embedded here: make the shell more powerful and liberating.

But reality was harsh. At the time, the entire exoskeleton industry sold fewer than 1,000 units per year, and consumer exoskeletons were beyond the pale of common understanding. Sun later recalled that when fundraising in 2022, he was rejected by nearly a hundred investors. Almost every roadshow brought the same question: “Why would an ordinary person need a consumer exoskeleton?” Some investors even called it an “impractical sci-fi product.”

The turning point came in 2023. Hypershell pioneered the world’s first single-motor driven exoskeleton system, and its proprietary globally-patented Omega configuration was unveiled. This design reduced both cost and weight by 50%. At the same time, Hypershell completed in-house development of core components, bringing the product price down to the thousand-dollar level – truly entering the consumer market.

In March of that year, Hypershell launched its first-generation product, the Hypershell Go, on Kickstarter, eventually raising $1.23 million and becoming one of the year’s Best Sellers. Among the backers from around the world, 40% were from the US. At that moment, the team realized: it wasn’t that the market didn’t need it, but that no one had gotten the product right before.

From then on, the fundraising landscape reversed. Investors rushed to invest. Qichuang Yechuang, Dexun Investment, Oasis Capital, Sequoia China, IDG Capital, and others came on board. In 2025, more big names from the investment world joined, and Hypershell completed a $70 million Pre-B and Series B round, adding new investors including Guanghe Capital, 5Y Capital, Monolith, and Meituan Longzhu.

Now, less than six months later, the Series B+ round has arrived, led by Ant Group and Meituan Longzhu, with participation from European old-line private equity fund Sofina and Granite Asia, making it a sensational phenomenon in the venture capital world.

The world’s hottest hardware, a team reaches global No.1

In just three years, Hypershell has staged a rapid rise in the embodied era.

It all starts with the core competitiveness. Unlike some companies’ “show-off R&D,” Hypershell’s technical approach is very clear: do R&D focused on consumer-level deployment. For example, in industrial design they made specific choices: carbon fiber body, adjustable length, very light weight, and a single switch. Lightweight, low cost – Hypershell solved the old problems of “heavy, bulky, expensive” exoskeletons and became the first company to bring mechanical exoskeletons from the medical and industrial fields to consumers.

The Hypershell X series is the pioneering product that validated the market. Hypershell developed its proprietary Omega architecture and AI MotionEngine™ motion engine algorithm. The whole unit weighs about 1.8 kg, yet the motor peak power reaches 800W, offsetting 30% of perceived load. In typical use scenarios, battery life reaches 15-17.5 km. This set of technical moves earned the Hypershell X Carbon the CES Best Innovation Award in early 2025.

The Hypershell X Ultra, launched last September, was even more impressive, winning the IFA Best Innovation Award in Berlin. Priced around ten thousand yuan, the X Ultra’s upgrades focus on two areas: algorithms and battery life.

In terms of algorithms, it features second-generation adaptive motion recognition, recognizing and adapting to 12 postures, and presets terrain modes for cycling, hiking, and other scenarios. Simply put, the exoskeleton no longer mechanically follows your movements but tries to “read” what you want to do next – the human-machine collaboration thus becomes more natural and seamless.

Based on joint hardware and software optimization, the X Ultra’s overall efficiency improved by 25%. This means that in the most demanding use scenarios, battery life more than doubled. Users no longer have to worry about charging and can focus more on going farther.

More significantly for the industry, Hypershell has pushed forward the establishment of standards – the Hypershell X Ultra is the world’s first exoskeleton product certified by third-party testing organization SGS, providing a benchmark for an industry plagued by missing standards and inflated specifications.

Mass production capability is even more convincing. In less than three years since becoming a Kickstarter annual Bestseller, Hypershell has jumped to become the world’s No.1 consumer exoskeleton brand by sales, with a sales network covering more than 70 countries and shipments of tens of thousands of units. On China’s JD.com platform, Hypershell holds the No.1 position in both sales and market share for the exoskeleton category; on Amazon in the US and Europe, it also firmly occupies the top sales spot.

In other words, the hottest exoskeleton brand in the world right now comes from a Chinese team.

Currently, Hypershell has offices in Shanghai and Shenzhen, with a team of nearly 200 people, of which R&D staff account for over 70%. Most of these R&D personnel have experience at top-tier tech companies, concentrated in robotics and AI consumer electronics. Today, Hypershell has accumulated hundreds of core technologies and patents in exoskeleton core technology, building another high barrier beyond mass production capability.

Letting technology serve humans themselves. On May 20, Hypershell will globally launch the all-new X series – integrating the HyperIntuition™ algorithm, which combines sensing, recognition, prediction, and behavior planning into a complete closed-loop system: no longer relying on preset gait templates, but interpreting the user’s motion intention in real time to achieve instinctive, “sense-and-move” coordination. It is also the first end-to-end consumer exoskeleton to be certified by Germany’s TÜV Rheinland.

“In my dreams, I have a red cloak that can fly me to all kinds of places – a sense of freedom that transcends physical limitations.” The dream scene from Sun’s youth is now within reach.

A trillion-dollar explodes, Chinese faces sweep the globe

From here, the exoskeleton – once a niche category – is gradually entering everyday life.

For a long time, constrained by high costs and technical bottlenecks, exoskeleton robots primarily served B2B scenarios such as medical and industrial use – weighing dozens of kilograms and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is only in recent years that breakthroughs in AI algorithms, lightweight composite materials, high-density motors, and precision mechanisms have made widespread adoption possible.

The emergence of Hypershell marks a turning point. It proved for the first time that exoskeletons can break out of the medical and industrial boundaries into more lifestyle scenarios like outdoor hiking, travel, daily mobility assistance, fatigue reduction, and even professional rescue – while weighing about 2 kg and costing only a few thousand yuan.

Subsequently, investment interest has heated up. Investor attitudes have shifted from to betting, with the exploding. According to forecasts, driven by aging populations, the of outdoor sports, and people’s desire to “break through physical limits,” the global exoskeleton market will grow at an annual rate of about 50%, heading toward a trillion-dollar scale.

Amid the excitement, what truly sets Hypershell apart is its understanding of real user scenarios.

Robert McComb, 60, had given up long-distance hiking due to asthma and age. Wearing the Hypershell X Carbon, he completed the 96-mile Scottish West Highland Way, including the fearsome “Devil’s Staircase,” at a pace of 20 miles per day. At the end of the hike, he realized he had not used his asthma inhaler once.

“Impossible things are now possible,” Robert said. “Why give up everything you love because of your body?”

There are many such stories: on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau scientific expedition, Hypershell helped researchers carry heavy loads across glacier areas; in the aftermath of the Hong Kong fire, frontline personnel used it to move objects weighing up to 90 kg after being soaked with water – the exoskeleton gave their legs “the strength to lift.”

This is what makes Hypershell most touching: rather than following the zero-sum game of AI replacing humans, it uses AI to create a vehicle for empowering free will, making humans more free.

Another story of a Chinese face competing globally is unfolding. Leveraging the dual advantages of China’s supply chain and AI, Hypershell follows a path similar to明星 tech companies like Tuozhu and Insta360: “overseas first, then domestic.” At the end of December last year, Hypershell opened a JD.com flagship store in China, and now its products cover more than 70 countries, with European and American markets contributing a significant share of revenue.

“Hypershell has not only validated the market potential of consumer exoskeletons but also demonstrated its capability to become a global brand.” Wang Xinyu, partner at Meituan Longzhu, has known the Hypershell team for several years and has witnessed their growth. He is long-term bullish on this – exoskeletons carry the imaginative potential to extend human capabilities and break through physical limits.

Li Haojun, managing partner at Granite Asia, views Hypershell as the starting point for a brand-new consumer robotics category. In his view, as robotics and AI technologies continue to evolve, companies that can truly translate complex technology into products that ordinary consumers can perceive, afford, and use long-term possess enormous long-term value. “Hypershell is one of the most representative early cases we have seen in China’s consumer tech space in recent years,” said Iason Bance, an investor at Sofina.

In Sun Kuan’s vision, Hypershell’s future goes far beyond this.

He believes that exoskeletons are essentially a “programmable interface” between humans and the physical world. Current products primarily cover the lower body and already possess three major capabilities: strength augmentation, reduction of physical energy consumption and joint load, and AI-driven dynamic optimization. There are many more scenarios to expand into in the future.

To make the world bigger for people, Sun firmly believes that opportunities are exactly where all the impossibilities lie.