A decade after founding Geek+, Yong Zheng has taken his company public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Priced at HKD 16.8 per share, the IPO raised a net total of HKD 2.2 billion (USD 281 million), giving the company a market capitalization of more than HKD 21.8 billion (USD 2.8 billion). Geek+ was one of six companies to debut on the exchange that day, underscoring a strong start to the year for Hong Kong’s IPO market. In the first half of 2025, 44 companies listed, raising over HKD 100 billion (USD 12.7 billion).
Investor interest in Geek+ was high. The Hong Kong public offering was oversubscribed by 133.62 times, and the international tranche by 30.17 times, placing it among the top three oversubscribed international placements this year and setting a record for tech sector listings. The deal attracted sovereign wealth funds, global long-only investors, tech-focused funds, and hedge funds. Shares opened at HKD 16.96 (USD 2.2), up 0.95%, bringing the company’s market cap to HKD 22 billion (USD 2.8 billion).
The making of Geek+
In 2014, Zheng visited an Amazon warehouse as part of his role at New Horizon Capital. He was struck by the sight of robots working in sync and returned to China in search of a startup doing similar work. When he found none, he decided to build one.
Zheng’s background positioned him well. A Tsinghua University graduate, he had worked at ABB, one of the global leaders in robotics, and later served as a factory manager at a Saint-Gobain subsidiary. He believed logistics would be the first sector to see large-scale robotic adoption.
That same year, Amazon rebranded Kiva as Amazon Robotics and began internal deployment. Today, it operates more than a million robots, roughly equal to its number of human warehouse workers.
Zheng enlisted Li Hongbo, a former Tsinghua professor, as co-founder. Li, with more than 15 years of robotics experience and over 130 patents, became and remains CTO and vice president. He holds 25.71% of the company, making him the second largest shareholder.
The company began in the basement of Tsinghua’s FIT Building. Later, two more co-founders joined: Liu Kai, a former engineer at the Beijing Institute of Control Engineering, and Chen Xi, who specialized in fiber optics and wireless communications at Raisecom. Both hold 18.08% of the company. Zheng remains the largest shareholder with 38.14%, and the founding team has stayed together over the past decade.
Building from scratch
Geek+ received its first investment of RMB 10 million (USD 1.4 million) from Alog. Volcanics Venture and Gaorong Ventures followed with RMB 21.25 million (USD 3 million) each, pushing the valuation to RMB 210 million (USD 29.4 million).
Investors gave the team a tight deadline: launch a goods-to-person system by Singles’ Day that year. With fewer than three months and only one prototype, the 20-person team eventually managed to deliver.
The first deployment at a Tmall supermarket served as a proof of concept. By 2016, Geek+ had signed contracts with multiple e-commerce platforms and was proving its autonomous mobile robot (AMR) solutions commercially.
The company’s breakout year came in 2017. It had raised four funding rounds and completed its first international project in Japan, becoming one of China’s earliest AMR exporters. By then, its valuation was between RMB 600–700 million (USD 84–98 million).
In 2019, Geek+ entered Germany and the US, building local teams. It closed a USD 116 million Series C1 round, doubling its valuation to USD 560 million. Zheng outlined the company’s global ambition: “In every market we enter, we don’t ask whether we can win. We ask how long it’ll take to become number one.”
The company continued to grow, raising USD 59 million in Series C2 funding and USD 120 million in Series D funding in 2020. Valuation reached USD 970 million. That year, Geek+ crossed the 10,000-unit sales mark.
The pandemic further accelerated sales. Between 2020–2021, the company sold another 10,000 units, supported by a RMB 225 million (USD 31.5 million) Series D+ round. Valuation rose to RMB 8 billion (USD 1.12 billion).
By late 2021, Geek+ had again doubled its valuation to RMB 15 billion (USD 2.1 billion) and closed a Series E1 round totaling RMB 1.195 billion (USD 167.3 million), plus an additional USD 45 million. No further capital was raised until the IPO.
Its shareholder base includes major investors Warburg Pincus (11.86%), Granite Asia (6.19%), Ant Group (4.93%), and the China Greater Bay Area Technology and Innovation Fund (4.60%).
Other backers include V Fund, D1 Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures China, Redview Capital, Volcanics Venture, Gaorong Ventures, Sailing Capital, China Internet Investment Fund, Morgan Stanley, B Capital Group, Hefei SASAC, Focus Capital, Qingyue Capital, Yili, Haier, ABC Capital Management, Intel, CICC Capital, and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP).
The business behind the robots
Geek+ became the world’s largest provider of warehouse fulfillment AMR solutions by revenue in 2024, holding a 9% global share for the sixth year running. Yet its slice of the broader warehouse automation market remains modest at 1%.
The company has more than 800 clients in over 40 countries and regions, including 63 Fortune Global 500 firms. It runs 48 service sites and 13 spare parts centers worldwide. One deployment for logistics firm Stork Up in Hong Kong was completed in 12 days to support peak shopping demand.
By the end of 2024, Geek+ had delivered 56,000 units, with over 70% of revenue from overseas. Key verticals include e-commerce, fast-moving consumer goods, and third-party logistics.
A local delivery and support model has driven customer loyalty. In 2024, its overall repurchase rate hit 74.6%, while the rate for key customers reached 84.3%, surpassing the industry norm.
US apparel distributor S&S Activewear upgraded five fulfillment centers using Geek+ systems over three years. UPS deployed more than 1,000 AMRs across both US coasts.
Backlog is a key performance indicator in the robotics sector. Geek+ reported RMB 1.996 billion (USD 279.4 million) in orders for 2022, RMB 2.694 billion (USD 377.2 million) in 2023 (up 35%), and RMB 3.14 billion (USD 439.6 million) in 2024 (up 16.6%).
Revenues were RMB 1.452 billion (USD 203.3 million) in 2022, RMB 2.143 billion (USD 301.9 million) in 2023, and RMB 2.409 billion (USD 339.2 million) in 2024, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 45% from 2021–2024.
Net losses are narrowing: RMB 1.567 billion (USD 219.4 million) in 2022, RMB 1.127 billion (USD 157.8 million) in 2023, and RMB 832 million (USD 116.5 million) in 2024. Adjusted net losses dropped to RMB 92 million (USD 12.9 million) in 2024, with a net loss margin of just 3.8%.
Zheng once identified two key milestones: surpassing 50,000 units shipped annually and seeing robots used in three out of every ten warehouse projects. Both now appear within reach.
With 2024 revenue of RMB 2.4 billion (USD 336 million), Geek+ leads all B2B robotics companies on the Hong Kong exchange. Regionally, revenue was split across Asia Pacific (28.1%), the US (26.1%), and EMEA (17.9%).
Overseas gross margins exceeded 46%, and warehouse AMR margins topped 39%. However, industrial handling AMR margins fell from 18.4% to 12.1% due to price competition in sectors like lithium batteries.
Geek+ named Hikrobot, Exotec, and Locus Robotics as its main global competitors. Hikrobot remains its chief rival in domestic industrial logistics, while Geek+ maintains an edge in warehouse fulfillment and international reach.
The global warehouse AMR market grew from RMB 7.9 billion (USD 1.1 billion) in 2020 to RMB 24.3 billion (USD 3.4 billion) in 2024. At a CAGR of 32.4%, it is projected to surpass RMB 1 trillion by 2029.
Commercializing robotics in a tough market
Startups specializing in robotics and artificial intelligence must arguably clear four hurdles: technical feasibility, product reliability, cost efficiency, and market readiness. Many never make it through all four.
Even Boston Dynamics, despite high visibility, cycled through multiple owners and more than USD 500 million before focusing on logistics robots.
In China, few B2B robotics firms have reached scale. Consumer brands like DJI and Roborock are better known. In B2B, the landscape is still evolving.
Firms such as Hai Robotics, Horizon Robotics, UBTech, and Seer Robotics are still chasing commercialization and scale. Some have turned to humanoid robots and embodied intelligence, but most efforts remain early-stage.
Geek+ is a rare outlier. With RMB 2.4 billion in annual revenue and operational breakeven in sight, it offers a potential blueprint for scaling AMR technology into a sustainable B2B business.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Xiao Xi for 36Kr.