(Yicai) Feb. 19 -- A subsidiary of Ant Group has started recruiting for positions in embodied intelligent humanoid robots, marking the leading Chinese financial technology firm’s entry into the fast-growing robotics sector.

Ant Lingbo Technology is hiring, including for structural engineers in humanoid robot hardware, according to job postings on recruitment platform Liepin. The vacancies are in the cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou, with salaries ranging from CNY35,000 to CNY80,000 (USD4,800 to USD10,980). 

Structural engineers in humanoid robot hardware are responsible for the design of the robot body, including key components such as joints, limbs, and torso. 

Shanghai-based Ant Lingbo was registered at the end of 2024 with capital of CNY100 million (USD13.7 million), according to corporate information platform Tianyancha, and it focuses on the research and application of embodied intelligent technology.

Embodied intelligent robots are a new direction in artificial intelligence and robotics. The Chinese market for such machines was about CNY2.76 billion (USD378 million) last year and could be worth CNY100 billion (USD13.7 billion) by 2030, according to an estimate by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

Ant has been developing data and AI technology in the fintech sector, and its move into robotics may be aimed at expanding its boundaries and exploring new growth opportunities in the smart hardware field.

The Hangzhou-based firm has not focused on developing hardware products in the past, but has invested in some upstream companies in the field. For example, Ant is one of the shareholders of Geek+, a smart warehousing robotics company. 

And it led a Series A3 fundraiser for Wuxi Muchuang Integrated Circuit Design last year, whose products include cryptographic security chips and smart network controller chips.  

Editor: Tom Litting