Urtopia raises $29M Series B to move from e-bikes into exoskeletons
What's the deal? Smart e-bike brand Urtopia has closed a Series B round of 200,000,000 CNY (roughly $29 million), led by Brizan VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and the Tongxiang Municipal Government Industrial Fund.
Investors Gao BingqiangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Kungho FundDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Guangyuan Hesheng, and Tony Gao also joined the round.
The company plans to spend the money on research, supply chains, and global expansion as it shifts from selling smart e-bikes to building what it calls "outdoor embodied intelligence."
Why now? Urtopia sees the e-bike as an entry point, not an endpoint.
Founder and chief executive officer Zhang Bo argues that e-bikes already combine motors, batteries, sensors, and micro-control units, giving them the parts needed to read a rider's body and surroundings in real time.
The system reads cadence, pedalling force, and heart rate while tracking terrain, slope, and wind resistance, then adjusts power to match. Urtopia calls this a "human-machine coupling" system, and it wants to reuse the same logic in mechanical exoskeletons.
The company also bought assets from PedegoDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, an established North American e-bike chain, in 2025 to reach US buyers and build out test rides, after-sales service, and local support.
What could go wrong? Exoskeletons are a far harder technical and regulatory leap than bicycles, and the jump could stretch a startup whose proven business is two-wheelers.
E-bikes carry high price tags and depend on hands-on service, so scaling offline channels across markets is costly and slow.
The signal: Now at breakout stage, Urtopia is reframing itself from a hardware brand into a "human-machine coupling" platform, betting the same perception-and-control stack that powers its bikes can extend to wearable robotics. The municipal industrial fund backing alongside Brizan Ventures underscores how local Chinese government capital is increasingly steering hardware startups toward the embodied intelligence wave.
Read more: 36Kr
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
