China dominates humanoid robots market with 85% of global output, but finding buyers proves harder

Investors bet humanoid robots will transform industry and homes over the next decade

China is currently far outpacing the U.S. in the development of the technology, market watchers said. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC this week that physical AI and robotics were where he saw the next trillion-dollar company emerging from. Humanoid robots, designed to mimic human movement and capabilities, have been hitting headlines in recent years, from their use as baggage handlers at Japanese airports to Tesla's big bet on its Optimus humanoid. Market watchers have predicted that the machines will change the world over the next decade and forecast that the industry will grow 100-fold, as AI's physical capabilities evolve. One investor said consumer stocks were the path to unlocking value from it. Zornitza Todorova, head of thematic FICC research at Barclays and a co-author of the bank's "AI Gets Physical" report, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Thursday that "it's the decade of the robot." "Humanoid robotics is really on an upward trajectory," she said. "The size of the market today is really small, it's 2 to 3 billion [dollars], but we see it going up to $200 billion in 2035." According to Todorova's report, published earlier this month, humanoids "are automation 3.0." The machines are designed to fill structural labor gaps, the report said, with ageing populations, urbanization and changing job preferences leaving "dirty, dull and dangerous" roles well suited to robots. "They're [already] doing simple, well-defined tasks like lifting boxes or picking things up from the assembly line, helping to fill roles where there are not that many humans that can do the jobs," Todorova told CNBC. "But that said, there is a lot to be done and the technology is maturing really, really fast," she added. "I think we are at the cusp of a transformation, we're just scratching the surface of what humanoid robots can do, and as the technology matures, as the models get better and faster at reacting to things in real time, I think we'll see a lot of applications in more services-oriented roles." The big opportunity in Western markets is going to be when physical AI reaches services-oriented roles, she added, which is where most of the economic growth in the West is generated. Barclays' report forecast two waves of humanoid deployment: the first is happening now and expected to last until 2030 in sectors like manufacturing, logistics, agriculture and construction, and the second after 2030 with the robots deployed in sectors including healthcare, elderly services, education and hospitality. The report also notes that China "is the world's robotics powerhouse and innovation lab," installing around half of all industrial robots globally -- nearly 300,000 versus 34,000 in the United States -- and lifting robot density by 600% to nearly 500 robots per 10,000 workers since 2016. China also "dominates the production and deployment of humanoid robots," and accounted for 85% of installations last year, the report added, saying China was producing robots "at roughly half the cost of Western competitors, typically in the $50k range." Jason Pidcock, who manages the £2.75 billion ($3.69 billion) Asian Income fund at asset management firm Jupiter, said that in a decade "the world will be completely different" thanks to developments in robotics. "In 10 years' time, there will be humanoid robots all over the place," he said during a meeting at Jupiter's offices in London on May 13. "You may have one in your home. You'll certainly have friends or family members that own a humanoid robot. Factories will be full of them. The armed forces, government departments will be full of them." Pidcock said that the rollout of the machines will dramatically improve productivity, saying that manufacturing the robots would require both hardware and software production. "Asia will be at the forefront of providing these things, and this is a big chunk of where we are investing," he said. In the year to the end of April, Pidcock's fund has gained 49.2%. Its top holdings include Mediatek, TSMC, Samsung, Foxconn, ST Engineering and Singtel. "We're looking for sectors that have companies in them that have the ability to evolve," Pidcock told the London event. "We're underweight consumer discretionary as a sector because our preferred way of playing the consumer is via the tech sector. So we think over the next few years, consumers will spend more of their discretionary spending on tech products, upgrading their phone, their computer, buying the first humanoid." Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC in an email that the company believes humanoid robots "could represent one of the biggest market opportunities in the AI Revolution." "This is the golden goose for physical AI and speaks to Tesla's grand vision on Optimus," said Ives. Ives manages Wedbush's AI Revolution ETF, which has gained 4.19% so far this year. The fund's top holdings are Micron, AMD, Broadcom and Nvidia. But he told CNBC that the core leading companies in the humanoid robotics space are still private. "We see China as right now the clear leader on this front. The U.S. is playing in catchup mode," he said. The market will be worth trillions of dollars over the next decade, Ives added, and "will change the way consumers and businesses operate over time." It will create a "massive production boost," he said, "but clearly there will be risks around robots that need to be carefully balanced by the industry and governments." Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

China builds cheap humanoids at scale that already sort mail and help around the house, but finding buyers might be the hardest part | Fortune

Chinese-made humanoid robots are making waves with their ability to do backflips, direct traffic, and even make coffee as the companies developing them seek ways to expand and dominate the market. Robot makers in China say they have thousands of orders from both the government and private businesses for humanoids that can do such things as sort parcels at postal centers, as the country finds ways to cope with an aging population and rising labor costs. However, some experts believe demand for humanoids lags the capacity to build them. China and the United States dominate research for what Morgan Stanley estimates is a $5 trillion humanoid robots market. By some measures, the U.S. holds an upper hand in developing the artificial intelligence for such robots' high-level computing power, or "brains." But as the world's factory floor, China leads in mass production capacity, supplies of hardware and harvesting of data for training robots. Robot makers say real-life demand is growing The Shanghai-based startup Matrix Robotics makes humanoid robots that employ AI. Its flagship humanoid robot, the "MATRIX-3," stands nearly 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) tall and is equipped with hands able to make finely controlled movements. They are priced at around $99,000 per unit. Customers for the roughly 1,000 orders it has received include coffee chains and hotels, its founder and CEO Allen Zhang, who formerly worked for Tesla, said at a recent robotics expo in Macao. So far, Matrix has made only a few hundred of the robots, though it said it will be capable of delivering 5,000 units within this year, depending on the number of orders. EngineAI, a startup based in southern China's Shenzhen, says its full-sized humanoid robots could be used as security guards and museum guides. They also perform, with dancing and boxing. A basic edition of its humanoid costs 180,000 yuan ($26,600). "The next step will be to move into more real-life scenarios," said Issac Li, EngineAI's head of brand and marketing. Demand for robots may lag behind Most humanoid robots are still performative rather than functional, falling short of working in messy, unpredictable environments, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology. "The use cases of these robots are still so limited," said Chibo Tang of the venture capital firm Gobi Partners, which invests in technology startups including robotics companies. "Without the demand and without that scale from the market, these companies are not able to really go into mass production." China had more than 140 humanoid robot manufacturers and more than 330 models in 2025, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, the Chinese government even publicly warned about the risk of a bubble in the industry given the lagging state of commercialization and applications. Corporate and academic labs are buying humanoid robots for research. And in China, many of the more than 2 billion yuan ($295 million) worth of orders in 2025 came from state-owned enterprises for use in places such as power plants, data centers or for entertainment, Morgan Stanley said. "The economics are tough: humanoid robots remain expensive to produce, fragile in operation, and dependent on highly structured environments to function," Sacks explained. There's "a long way to go to get to a level of functionality where people will actually feel comfortable having them in their homes providing care for elderly or children," she said. Still, compared to other countries, China is keen on humanoids The more viable commercial path will more likely be through industrial and logistics settings, Sacks said. But many factories in China and elsewhere already are equipped with non-humanoid robotic arms that perform repetitive single functions and may not need many humanoid robots. In Japan and in the U.S., humanoid robot startups are also struggling to find buyers in industrial and other work settings. Yet over the past year, real-world deployment of humanoid robots in China has accelerated. Chinese people are relatively "used to this rapid change in terms of technology," said Ye Tian, an ex-Apple engineer and founder and CEO of the Chinese startup RoboScience, which focuses on developing the systems behind AI-powered robots. As the technology matures, humanoids could perform heavy-lifting and mundane tasks in warehouses, factories and ports, said Lian Jye Su, with the technology research group Omdia. Humanoid robots also can fill in gaps where work is dangerous or repetitive, Matrix's Zhang said. There's also a "very large household market" for handling chores in hundreds of millions of homes in China, he believes. In Beijing, freelance social media content creator Yang Ning recently tried out a cleaning service with a helper robot with mechanical arms and hands. It can do simple tasks like organizing shoes, folding clothes and changing garbage bags, but it's accompanied by a human cleaner. Watching the robot sort shoes at her doorway was "amazing," she said. Still, she thought the helper robot was not that efficient and was "a bit too big and difficult to move around in a small house." China leads the global humanoid robots market Last year, Chinese humanoid robots accounted for around 85% globally, according to a recent research report by Barclays. Startups in China have the advantage of massive state support, in line with the ruling Communist Party's 2026-2030 five-year plan targeting the frontiers of technology, including advancements of humanoid robots. Of the more than 13,000 humanoid robots shipped in 2025, AGIBOT and Unitree, two of China's leading robotics companies, each shipped over 5,000, while U.S. rivals like Figure AI and Tesla each shipped a few hundred or less, according to Omdia. Morgan Stanley expects China's humanoid sales to more than double this year to around 28,000 units. Omdia forecasts that annual shipments of advanced robots could surpass 1 million units by the early 2030s. Some robot makers say they are already profitable. Unitree said it made 1.7 billion yuan (around $250 million) in revenue last year, with a profit of over 278 million yuan ($41 million). Robot makers argue that as production of humanoid robots increases, costs will drop. Using more locally made parts also helped make Chinese robots 20% or more cheaper than foreign models on average, Morgan Stanley said. It estimates the average price could fall to about $21,000 by 2050, from $46,000 last year. Some humanoid robots in China were priced at below $6,000. Even so, cost remains an obstacle A report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies said while China's humanoids are already cheaper than those made elsewhere, they are still "far too expensive for widespread deployment." Another challenge for manufacturers is to accumulate enough good data to train more robots. Wang Xiaogang, co-founder of the Chinese AI software company SenseTime and chairman of ACE Robotics, said his company is collecting a lot of human-centric data from factories, retailing and offices settings that could guide advanced robots to perform complicated functions. For humanoid robots to learn more than single tasks, data from a wide variety of scenarios in public and private settings with a reasonable level of difficulty is needed, said Eric Guo, founder and CEO of Shenzhen-based AI² Robotics. But that could take years to massively scale up. "The mass production capability in (the) robotic area is still at the very early stage," Guo said. ___ Associated Press video journalists Olivia Zhang and Wu Jia in Beijing contributed to this report. ___ This story was first published on June 6. It was updated on June 9 to correct the spelling of the first name of the CEO of Matrix Robotics to Allen.

Chinese humanoid robots dominate the market with thousands shipped a year. But most are still performative rather than functional | Fortune

Chinese-made humanoid robots are making waves with their ability to do backflips, direct traffic, and even make coffee as the companies developing them seek ways to expand and dominate the market. Robot makers in China say they have thousands of orders from both the government and private businesses for humanoids that can do such things as sort parcels at postal centers, as the country finds ways to cope with an aging population and rising labor costs. However, some experts believe demand for humanoids lags the capacity to build them. China and the United States dominate research for what Morgan Stanley estimates is a $5 trillion humanoid robots market. By some measures, the U.S. holds an upper hand in developing the artificial intelligence for such robots' high-level computing power, or "brains." But as the world's factory floor, China leads in mass production capacity, supplies of hardware and harvesting of data for training robots. Robot makers say real-life demand is growing The Shanghai-based startup Matrix Robotics makes humanoid robots that employ AI. Its flagship humanoid robot, the "MATRIX-3," stands nearly 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) tall and is equipped with hands able to make finely controlled movements. They are priced at around $99,000 per unit. Customers for the roughly 1,000 orders it has received include coffee chains and hotels, its founder and CEO Allan Zhang, who formerly worked for Tesla, said at a recent robotics expo in Macao. So far, Matrix has made only a few hundred of the robots, though it said it will be capable of delivering 5,000 units within this year, depending on the number of orders. EngineAI, a startup based in southern China's Shenzhen, says its full-sized humanoid robots could be used as security guards and museum guides. They also perform, with dancing and boxing. A basic edition of its humanoid costs 180,000 yuan ($26,600). "The next step will be to move into more real-life scenarios," said Issac Li, EngineAI's head of brand and marketing. Demand for robots may lag behind Most humanoid robots are still performative rather than functional, falling short of working in messy, unpredictable environments, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology. "The use cases of these robots are still so limited," said Chibo Tang of the venture capital firm Gobi Partners, which invests in technology startups including robotics companies. "Without the demand and without that scale from the market, these companies are not able to really go into mass production." China had more than 140 humanoid robot manufacturers and more than 330 models in 2025, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, the Chinese government even publicly warned about the risk of a bubble in the industry given the lagging state of commercialization and applications. Corporate and academic labs are buying humanoid robots for research. And in China, many of the more than 2 billion yuan ($295 million) worth of orders in 2025 came from state-owned enterprises for use in places such as power plants, data centers or for entertainment, Morgan Stanley said. "The economics are tough: humanoid robots remain expensive to produce, fragile in operation, and dependent on highly structured environments to function," Sacks explained. There's "a long way to go to get to a level of functionality where people will actually feel comfortable having them in their homes providing care for elderly or children," she said. Still, compared to other countries, China is keen on humanoids The more viable commercial path will more likely be through industrial and logistics settings, Sacks said. But many factories in China and elsewhere already are equipped with non-humanoid robotic arms that perform repetitive single functions and may not need many humanoid robots. In Japan and in the U.S., humanoid robot startups are also struggling to find buyers in industrial and other work settings. Yet over the past year, real-world deployment of humanoid robots in China has accelerated. Chinese people are relatively "used to this rapid change in terms of technology," said Ye Tian, an ex-Apple engineer and founder and CEO of the Chinese startup RoboScience, which focuses on developing the systems behind AI-powered robots. As the technology matures, humanoids could perform heavy-lifting and mundane tasks in warehouses, factories and ports, said Lian Jye Su, with the technology research group Omdia. Humanoid robots also can fill in gaps where work is dangerous or repetitive, Matrix's Zhang said. There's also a "very large household market" for handling chores in hundreds of millions of homes in China, he believes. In Beijing, freelance social media content creator Yang Ning recently tried out a cleaning service with a helper robot with mechanical arms and hands. It can do simple tasks like organizing shoes, folding clothes and changing garbage bags, but it's accompanied by a human cleaner. Watching the robot sort shoes at her doorway was "amazing," she said. Still, she thought the helper robot was not that efficient and was "a bit too big and difficult to move around in a small house." China leads the global humanoid robots market Last year, Chinese humanoid robots accounted for around 85% globally, according to a recent research report by Barclays. Startups in China have the advantage of massive state support, in line with the ruling Communist Party's 2026-2030 five-year plan targeting the frontiers of technology, including advancements of humanoid robots. Of the more than 13,000 humanoid robots shipped in 2025, AGIBOT and Unitree, two of China's leading robotics companies, each shipped over 5,000, while U.S. rivals like Figure AI and Tesla each shipped a few hundred or less, according to Omdia. Morgan Stanley expects China's humanoid sales to more than double this year to around 28,000 units. Omdia forecasts that annual shipments of advanced robots could surpass 1 million units by the early 2030s. Some robot makers say they are already profitable. Unitree said it made 1.7 billion yuan (around $250 million) in revenue last year, with a profit of over 278 million yuan ($41 million). Robot makers argue that as production of humanoid robots increases, costs will drop. Using more locally made parts also helped make Chinese robots 20% or more cheaper than foreign models on average, Morgan Stanley said. It estimates the average price could fall to about $21,000 by 2050, from $46,000 last year. Some humanoid robots in China were priced at below $6,000. Even so, cost remains an obstacle A report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies said while China's humanoids are already cheaper than those made elsewhere, they are still "far too expensive for widespread deployment." Another challenge for manufacturers is to accumulate enough good data to train more robots. Wang Xiaogang, co-founder of the Chinese AI software company SenseTime and chairman of ACE Robotics, said his company is collecting a lot of human-centric data from factories, retailing and offices settings that could guide advanced robots to perform complicated functions. For humanoid robots to learn more than single tasks, data from a wide variety of scenarios in public and private settings with a reasonable level of difficulty is needed, said Eric Guo, founder and CEO of Shenzhen-based AI² Robotics. But that could take years to massively scale up. "The mass production capability in (the) robotic area is still at the very early stage," Guo said.

China Can Build Humanoids at Scale. the Hard Part Is Finding Enough Buyers

HONG KONG (AP) -- Chinese-made humanoid robots are making waves with their ability to do backflips, direct traffic, and even make coffee as the companies developing them seek ways to expand and dominate the market. Robot makers in China say they have thousands of orders from both the government and private businesses for humanoids that can do such things as sort parcels at postal centers, as the country finds ways to cope with an aging population and rising labor costs. However, some experts believe demand for humanoids lags the capacity to build them. China and the United States dominate research for what Morgan Stanley estimates is a $5 trillion humanoid robots market. By some measures, the U.S. holds an upper hand in developing the artificial intelligence for such robots' high-level computing power, or "brains." But as the world's factory floor, China leads in mass production capacity, supplies of hardware and harvesting of data for training robots. Robot makers say real-life demand is growing The Shanghai-based startup Matrix Robotics makes humanoid robots that employ AI. Its flagship humanoid robot, the "MATRIX-3," stands nearly 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) tall and is equipped with hands able to make finely controlled movements. They are priced at around $99,000 per unit. Customers for the roughly 1,000 orders it has received include coffee chains and hotels, its founder and CEO Allan Zhang, who formerly worked for Tesla, said at a recent robotics expo in Macao. So far, Matrix has made only a few hundred of the robots, though it said it will be capable of delivering 5,000 units within this year, depending on the number of orders. EngineAI, a startup based in southern China's Shenzhen, says its full-sized humanoid robots could be used as security guards and museum guides. They also perform, with dancing and boxing. A basic edition of its humanoid costs 180,000 yuan ($26,600). "The next step will be to move into more real-life scenarios," said Issac Li, EngineAI's head of brand and marketing. Demand for robots may lag behind Most humanoid robots are still performative rather than functional, falling short of working in messy, unpredictable environments, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology. "The use cases of these robots are still so limited," said Chibo Tang of the venture capital firm Gobi Partners, which invests in technology startups including robotics companies. "Without the demand and without that scale from the market, these companies are not able to really go into mass production." China had more than 140 humanoid robot manufacturers and more than 330 models in 2025, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, the Chinese government even publicly warned about the risk of a bubble in the industry given the lagging state of commercialization and applications. Corporate and academic labs are buying humanoid robots for research. And in China, many of the more than 2 billion yuan ($295 million) worth of orders in 2025 came from state-owned enterprises for use in places such as power plants, data centers or for entertainment, Morgan Stanley said. "The economics are tough: humanoid robots remain expensive to produce, fragile in operation, and dependent on highly structured environments to function," Sacks explained. There's "a long way to go to get to a level of functionality where people will actually feel comfortable having them in their homes providing care for elderly or children," she said. Still, compared to other countries, China is keen on humanoids The more viable commercial path will more likely be through industrial and logistics settings, Sacks said. But many factories in China and elsewhere already are equipped with non-humanoid robotic arms that perform repetitive single functions and may not need many humanoid robots. In Japan and in the U.S., humanoid robot startups are also struggling to find buyers in industrial and other work settings. Yet over the past year, real-world deployment of humanoid robots in China has accelerated. Chinese people are relatively "used to this rapid change in terms of technology," said Ye Tian, an ex-Apple engineer and founder and CEO of the Chinese startup RoboScience, which focuses on developing the systems behind AI-powered robots. As the technology matures, humanoids could perform heavy-lifting and mundane tasks in warehouses, factories and ports, said Lian Jye Su, with the technology research group Omdia. Humanoid robots also can fill in gaps where work is dangerous or repetitive, Matrix's Zhang said. There's also a "very large household market" for handling chores in hundreds of millions of homes in China, he believes. In Beijing, freelance social media content creator Yang Ning recently tried out a cleaning service with a helper robot with mechanical arms and hands. It can do simple tasks like organizing shoes, folding clothes and changing garbage bags, but it's accompanied by a human cleaner. Watching the robot sort shoes at her doorway was "amazing," she said. Still, she thought the helper robot was not that efficient and was "a bit too big and difficult to move around in a small house." China leads the global humanoid robots market Last year, Chinese humanoid robots accounted for around 85% globally, according to a recent research report by Barclays. Startups in China have the advantage of massive state support, in line with the ruling Communist Party's 2026-2030 five-year plan targeting the frontiers of technology, including advancements of humanoid robots. Of the more than 13,000 humanoid robots shipped in 2025, AGIBOT and Unitree, two of China's leading robotics companies, each shipped over 5,000, while U.S. rivals like Figure AI and Tesla each shipped a few hundred or less, according to Omdia. Morgan Stanley expects China's humanoid sales to more than double this year to around 28,000 units. Omdia forecasts that annual shipments of advanced robots could surpass 1 million units by the early 2030s. Some robot makers say they are already profitable. Unitree said it made 1.7 billion yuan (around $250 million) in revenue last year, with a profit of over 278 million yuan ($41 million). Robot makers argue that as production of humanoid robots increases, costs will drop. Using more locally made parts also helped make Chinese robots 20% or more cheaper than foreign models on average, Morgan Stanley said. It estimates the average price could fall to about $21,000 by 2050, from $46,000 last year. Some humanoid robots in China were priced at below $6,000. Even so, cost remains an obstacle A report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies said while China's humanoids are already cheaper than those made elsewhere, they are still "far too expensive for widespread deployment." Another challenge for manufacturers is to accumulate enough good data to train more robots. Wang Xiaogang, co-founder of the Chinese AI software company SenseTime and chairman of ACE Robotics, said his company is collecting a lot of human-centric data from factories, retailing and offices settings that could guide advanced robots to perform complicated functions. For humanoid robots to learn more than single tasks, data from a wide variety of scenarios in public and private settings with a reasonable level of difficulty is needed, said Eric Guo, founder and CEO of Shenzhen-based AI² Robotics. But that could take years to massively scale up. "The mass production capability in (the) robotic area is still at the very early stage," Guo said. ___ Associated Press video journalists Olivia Zhang and Wu Jia in Beijing contributed to this report.

China can build humanoids at scale. The hard part is finding enough buyers

Chinese companies are pushing ahead with humanoid robot production. These robots can perform tasks like directing traffic and making coffee. Thousands of orders are coming from government and private businesses. Experts question if demand matches production capacity. China leads in manufacturing, while the US leads in AI. The market is estimated at five trillion dollars. Hong Kong: Chinese-made humanoid robots are making waves with their ability to do backflips, direct traffic, and even make coffee as the companies developing them seek ways to expand and dominate the market. Robot makers in China say they have thousands of orders from both the government and private businesses for humanoids that can do such things as sort parcels at postal centers, as the country finds ways to cope with an aging population and rising labor costs. However, some experts believe demand for humanoids lags the capacity to build them. China and the US dominate research for what Morgan Stanley estimates is a $5 trillion humanoid robots market. By some measures, the US holds an upper hand in developing the artificial intelligence for such robots' high-level computing power, or "brains." But China leads in mass production capacity, supplies of hardware and harvesting of data for training robots. The Shanghai-based startup Matrix Robotics makes humanoid robots that employ AI. Its flagship humanoid robot, the "MATRIX-3," stands nearly 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) tall and is equipped with hands able to make finely controlled movements. They are priced at $99,000 per unit. Customers for the roughly 1,000 orders it has received include coffee chains and hotels, its founder and CEO Allan Zhang, who formerly worked for Tesla, said at a recent robotics expo in Macao. So far, Matrix has made only a few hundred of the robots, though it said it will be capable of delivering 5,000 units within this year, depending on the number of orders. EngineAI, a startup based in southern China's Shenzhen, says its full-sized humanoid robots could be used as security guards and museum guides. They also perform, with dancing and boxing. A basic edition of its humanoid costs 180,000 yuan ($26,600). "The next step will be to move into more real-life scenarios," said Issac Li, EngineAI's head of brand and marketing. Most humanoid robots are still performative rather than functional, falling short of working in messy, unpredictable environments, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology. "The use cases of these robots are still so limited," said Chibo Tang of the venture capital firm Gobi Partners, which invests in technology startups including robotics companies. "Without the demand and without that scale from the market, these companies are not able to really go into mass production." China had more than 140 humanoid robot manufacturers and more than 330 models in 2025, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, the Chinese government even warned about the risk of a bubble in the industry given the lagging state of commercialisation and applications. Corporate and academic labs are buying humanoid robots for research. And in China, many of the more than two billion yuan ($295 million) worth of orders in 2025 came from state-owned enterprises for use in places such as power plants, data centers or for entertainment, Morgan Stanley said. "The economics are tough: humanoid robots remain expensive to produce, fragile in operation, and dependent on highly structured environments to function," Sacks explained. There's "a long way to go to get to a level of functionality where people will actually feel comfortable having them in their homes providing care for elderly or children," she said. The more viable commercial path will more likely be through industrial and logistics settings, Sacks said. But many factories in China and elsewhere already are equipped with non-humanoid robotic arms that perform repetitive single functions and may not need many humanoid robots. In Japan and in the US, humanoid robot startups are also struggling to find buyers in industrial and other work settings. Yet over the past year, real-world deployment of humanoid robots in China has accelerated. Chinese people are relatively "used to this rapid change in terms of technology," said Ye Tian, an ex-Apple engineer and founder and CEO of the Chinese startup RoboScience, which focuses on developing the systems behind AI-powered robots. As the technology matures, humanoids could perform heavy-lifting and mundane tasks in warehouses, factories and ports, said Lian Jye Su, with the technology research group Omdia. Humanoid robots also can fill in gaps where work is dangerous or repetitive, Matrix's Zhang said. There's also a "very large household market" for handling chores in hundreds of millions of homes in China, he believes. In Beijing, freelance social media content creator Yang Ning recently tried out a cleaning service with a helper robot with mechanical arms and hands. It can do simple tasks like organising shoes, folding clothes and changing garbage bags, but it's accompanied by a human cleaner. Watching the robot sort shoes at her doorway was "amazing," she said. Still, she thought the helper robot was not that efficient and was "a bit too big and difficult to move around in a small house." Last year, Chinese humanoid robots accounted for around 85% globally, according to a recent research report by Barclays.

Chinese humanoids are one step closer to IPOs

China's robotics sector is gearing up for a wave of IPOs as the country positions itself at the forefront of the next phase of AI. Unitree Robotics has secured approval for a Shanghai listing, while dozens of robotics firms are preparing to go public. Analysts expect IPO proceeds to accelerate R&D and support China's push for leadership in humanoid robotics and physical AI. China is pitching itself as the global fulcrum for the next phase of artificial intelligence and a legion of robotics companies is lining up initial public offerings to test investor appetite. Unitree Robotics, one of the most recognizable names in the industry after its robots practicing martial arts made headlines, on Monday received approval for a listing in Shanghai. Its IPO will serve as an early test for what could be a broader wave of offerings. Hong Kong alone has at least 46 robotics-related companies in the pipeline, more than 10% of applicants, according to a report. Companies that have filed IPO applications include Leju Robotics and Deep Robotics. "Chinese humanoids are one step closer to IPOs, igniting market interest on humanoids in the second half of 2026," Sheng Zhong, head of China industrials research at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note. "Funds from most of the Chinese humanoids' IPOs will go toward R&D, especially robot models." The deep pipeline of robotics IPOs mirrors the fast rise of China's AI ecosystem, where an array of listings whipped up an investor frenzy in the past six months. It also aligns with Beijing's push to shift high-tech industries from innovation to large-scale deployment. China is rushing to set the pace of funding, industrialization and ultimately leadership in what Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang calls "physical AI." Shares of OneRobotics (Shenzhen) Co. jumped as much as 18% in Hong Kong on Tuesday, while component maker Leader Harmonious Drive Systems Co. gained as much as 11% on the mainland. "This is the decade of the robot - and it belongs to China," Barclays analysts, including Zornitsa Todorova, wrote in a note last month. "This leadership reflects a decade-long, state-guided push." The firm says China's robotics roll-out is already unmatched, accounting for 50% of global industrial robots and 85% of humanoids in 2025. Backed by coordinated industrial policy and tight supply-chain control, humanoids could reach about 3.8% of the nation's labor capacity by 2035, it estimates. Unitree got a nice shoutout from Nvidia's Huang on Monday, when he showcased his company's endeavors in robotic AI. The two companies have partnered to build humanoid "reference" machines, featuring five-fingered hands and built-in chips to replace cumbersome "Frankenrobots" in research labs. Some investors remain more cautious, though, when looking at the companies' fundamentals. Many robotics firms are expected to burn cash for years and concerns are mounting that valuations could run ahead of earnings. A gauge of humanoid robot stocks has fallen about 13% this year, after registering a 47% gain in 2025. ChinaAMC CSI Robot ETF, a major exchange-traded fund tracking robot-related stocks, has seen net fund outflows for most of this year. Valuations were also elevated, with the sector trading at about 40 times forward earnings, compared with about 14 times for the CSI 300 Index, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. "Investors trading at such elevated valuations are typically not driven by long-term fundamentals, but rather by the pursuit of short-term price gains," said Shen Meng, a director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co. "It indicates that sentiment is driven more by market dynamics than by conviction or long-term vision." The state-run China Securities Journal also struck a cautious tone in an editorial published Tuesday, warning that pre-IPO valuations may outpace fundamentals, with many firms still unprofitable, raising the risk of a sharp correction if growth or commercialization disappoints. Still, prospective issuers can look at the performance of China tech IPOs this year, with many listings thousands of times oversubscribed and producing big gains on their debuts. Two of those companies, AI model developers Knowledge Atlas Technology Joint Stock Co. and MiniMax Group Inc. last month gained inclusion in the Hang Seng Tech Index after massive rallies since their January listings. For investors, the robotics companies can also offer a way to benefit from the rapid expansion of a cutting edge industry, said Zhou Nan, founder and investment director of Shenzhen Long Hui Fund Management Co. "With continued advances in AI, the robotics sector is poised for substantial long-term growth," Zhou said. "Robotics is expected to become a key driver of enterprise value, and progressively complement or replace human labor across a wide range of use cases."