Clawlab Raises $15 Million for Home Smart Knitting Machine

Clawlab has raised more than $15 million in Pre-A3 financing to build a smart knitting machine for home users, bringing total funding to roughly $25 million across four equity rounds. miHoYo, the games company behind Genshin Impact's publisher, led the round. Vision Plus Capital and Shunwei Capital increased their stakes through super pro rata participation. Existing shareholders Sequoia China and YM Capital also remain on the cap table, according to the company's announcement.

The deal adds a strategic corporate investor to a venture-backed cap table just as the startup prepares to show its machine to an international audience at CES 2027.

Who is Clawlab and what are they building?

Founded in 2023, Clawlab is developing a smart knitting machine that aims to move capabilities normally reserved for professional equipment into the home. The machine is designed to take an image or an idea and turn it into a finished knitted item. It automates three steps that normally demand skill: pattern preparation, stitchwork and repetitive production.

Users keep control over the creative decisions. They choose the design, the colors and what the finished piece is for. The company lists scarves, doll clothing, pet accessories and personalized gifts as target applications. It also sees a path from hobby to commerce: users could develop custom products or run small businesses on top of the machine.

Who is behind the company?

Founder and CEO Wenxin Hu previously worked as a hardware engineer at DJI and Meituan. Most of the core research and development team are also former DJI employees. That lineage matters. DJI built its business by turning equipment once confined to professionals — camera drones — into consumer products with mass-market appeal. Clawlab is applying the same playbook to a different machine category.

The company says it is using that consumer hardware experience to redesign knitting across three layers: the equipment itself, the software that drives it, and the way users interact with it. The stated goal is to strip out the specialist knowledge normally required for pattern development, stitch control and machine operation.

What problem does the company claim to solve?

Hu frames the opportunity around unmet demand for personalization rather than scarcity of textiles. In the announcement, Hu said:

"Textiles meet a broad, long-standing need in everyday life. Standardized products are abundant, but consumers' desire for personal style, customization, and emotional expression remains underserved. We want to reconnect ideas, design, and production so that people without professional training can create through knitting."

The quote lays out the mechanism the company is betting on. Mass-produced textiles are cheap and everywhere. What the market lacks, in Clawlab's view, is a tool that lets an untrained consumer close the gap between an idea in their head and a physical object in their hands, without learning pattern drafting or machine operation.

What comes next?

Clawlab's longer-term plan goes beyond a single device. The company intends to combine smart equipment with design software and a creator community, so users can develop and share customized textile products. That three-part stack — hardware, software, network — mirrors how consumer hardware companies historically built defensible positions after the first device ships.

The commercial question is whether knitting has enough pull to justify it. Knitting is a slower, less visually shareable craft than photography or drone flying. The company's bet rests on connecting demand for personalized creation with tools that simplify the underlying engineering, and on whether CES 2027 produces the distribution partnerships a hardware startup needs to reach buyers outside the maker community.