Ant Group just led a $73.59 million funding round into a humanoid robotics company called Zeroth. This marks their twelfth robot deal in eighteen months. Twelve deals. For humanoid robots. In a year and a half.
Someone at Ant Group wakes up every six weeks and thinks "we need more robots that look like people." Then they wire millions of yuan to a startup with a name that sounds like a rejected Matrix character. Then they go to lunch. Then they do it again forty-five days later.
The company is called Zeroth. Not First. Not Prime. Zeroth. The mathematically impossible ordinal number that comes before one. The kind of name you pick when you want investors to know you're either deeply philosophical or deeply stupid and you're betting they can't tell the difference.
Ant Group is an affiliate of Alibaba, which means they have Jack Ma's money but not his problems. They've decided the best use of half a billion yuan is funding machines that walk upright and presumably make eye contact. Not industrial robots that build cars or move boxes. Humanoid robots. Robots with faces and feelings and presumably LinkedIn profiles.
Eighteen months. Twelve deals. That's a new robot investment every six weeks like clockwork. Somewhere in Hangzhou there's a vice president whose entire job is signing checks to companies that promise their robot will be the one that finally replaces your barista. His calendar just says "robot meeting" every forty-five days until 2027.
The retail traders who bought Ant Group exposure are now indirect stakeholders in a portfolio of walking talking machines that exist primarily in PowerPoint decks and YouTube demos where they fall over. They thought they were investing in fintech. They got a venture capital firm that's one board meeting away from becoming Skynet's angel investor.
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