Why China’s humanoid robot industry is winning the early market

China’s humanoid robots grabbed global attention with kung fu flips at the nation’s televised Spring Festival Gala, while Chinese phone maker Honor is set to unveil its first humanoid robot at MWC in Spain. 

Robotics was flagged as a priority under the country’s “Made in China 2025” plan, albeit originally focused on factory automation, rather than humanoids. Now, rapid advances in multimodal AI are accelerating so-called embodied AI — autonomous machines operating in the real world — a push officials say could help offset labor shortages and drive productivity gains. 

At this early stage of humanoid robot development, Chinese companies are outpacing their U.S. rivals in both speed and volume, Selina Xu, a China and AI policy lead at the office of Eric Schmidt said.

“China has a more robust hardware supply chain — much of it built up through the EV sector, from sensors to batteries — and the world’s strongest manufacturing base, allowing companies to iterate far faster than Western competitors,” Xu told TechCrunch. 

As a result, not only are Chinese robots cheaper but companies can also release new models more quickly, Xu noted, adding that leading Chinese player Unitree shipped roughly 36 times more units last year than U.S. rivals Figure and Tesla.  

Global humanoid robot shipments totaled just 13,317 units last year, according to a Forbes report released last month. That is a tiny base for an industry expected to nearly double annually and reach 2.6 million units by 2035. (Still, the figures should be viewed with caution. The report notes it remains unclear how many units represent commercial sales versus demo models or pilot deployments, underscoring the early-stage nature of the industry.) 

The top humanoid robot makers by 2025 shipments were led by China’s Agibot and Unitree, followed by UBTech, Leju Robotics, Engine AI, and Fourier Intelligence, underscoring Beijing’s early dominance in the sector.  

The biggest shift recently has been from “demo-driven excitement” to “operations-driven adoption,” Yuli Zhao, chief strategy officer at Galbot, told TechCrunch. Galbot’s humanoid robot, the G1, appeared at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, China’s annual, state-run lunar New Year’s Eve television show, alongside robots from Unitree Robotics, Noetix, and MagicLab. 

“More customers are asking: Can the robot run stably in real environments and actually take work off people’s plates? That practical pull is strengthened in China because policy and industrial strategy encourage automation upgrades, and the manufacturing ecosystem makes iteration extremely fast,” Zhao said.

While increased funding toward humanoid startups “has definitely accelerated” the pace of progress, “the most durable adoption comes when you can show reliable and repeatable value in production or service operations, not just a one-off showcase,” Zhao added.

Still, investing helps and Chinese robotics makers are securing it. Last year Unitree was valued at around $3 billion after closing its Series C, with ambitions to reach as much as $7 billion in a future IPO. Meanwhile, Galbot has raised more than $300 million in fresh funding, reportedly pushing its valuation to $3 billion, one of the largest financings in China’s humanoid robotics sector to date. 

U.S. companies are moving beyond flashy demos as well to focus on real-world deployments. Plus, they are pursuing their own aggressive goals. U.S. startup Foundation, for instance, plans to build 50,000 humanoid robots by the end of 2027. 

But China is already targeting a mix of affordable mass-market models and high-end applications, rapidly expanding humanoids across industrial, consumer, and rehabilitation sectors, according to a December TrendForce report.

Bottlenecks to China’s dominance

When it comes to AI systems and integrated software, it’s still unclear where Chinese humanoid firms truly stand. The industry is largely betting on vision-language-action models and “world models,” but both technologies remain in early stages. Nvidia currently leads the space with its end-to-end humanoid software stack, according to Xu, so naturally most humanoid startups in China are powered by Nvidia’s Orin chips. However, domestic chipmakers are developing homegrown alternatives, she said. 

Yet humanoid robotics makers are still working on fundamental problems. The challenge is enabling robot foundation models to predict the “next physical state” the robot will face in unpredictable environments, like how large language models predict the next word. But unlike LLMs, humanoid robotics companies can’t simply scrape the internet for training data, Xu said. So most are relying on simulation environments, which generates synthetic data, though real-world data collection remains essential. 

“Because of the data scarcity problem, humanoids are still far away from autonomy. The hardware is currently ahead of the software — the robot body can handle a lot more dexterity today than years ago (though it has reliability issues, as we saw with the robots that broke down at humanoid marathons), but the brain is still nascent,” the analyst said. 

Safety is a major hurdle for humanoid robots, too. One high-profile accident could trigger public backlash, and China is likely weighing how to roll out the technology quickly without moving too fast. As the industry matures, more regulations are expected.

Given the lack of data, Zhao believes that demand for humanoids will grow first in fairly contained workplaces.

“Early momentum is likely to be in industrial manufacturing, warehouse logistics, and retail, where tasks are repetitive, hours are long, and processes are clear — creating real demand and ideal conditions for humanoid robots to deliver value at scale,” he said. 

Other APAC players 

Humanoid robot development is not a two-country race. Japan’s robotics ecosystem — from startups to semiconductor heavyweights — is targeting humanoid mass production by 2027. Long a pioneer through projects like Honda’s Asimo, Murata Manufacturing’s Murata Boy, and SoftBank Robotics’ Pepper, Japan leans on precision and advanced control. One area unique to this nation: Humanoid robots are increasingly used in eldercare.  

Coral Capital CEO James Riney, who invests in tech companies in Japan, believes Tokyo will continue to thrive in the humanoid robotics industry. “There are three factors likely to drive the adoption of robotics in Japan. One is the labor shortage and the desire to depend less on mass immigration. The second is the widespread cultural view of robots as our friends — more Doraemon vs. Terminator. The third is that Japan is already dominant in many parts of the robotics supply chain.”

Hyundai Motor’s Boston Dynamics unit introduced a new Atlas humanoid for factory use by 2028, with plans to produce up to 30,000 units annually in the U.S. as part of its AI-driven robotics push.  

Still, for China, government policy, industrial strategy, labor shortages, and private capital are all converging to turbocharge the country’s humanoid robotics push. 

 “China’s leadership is best understood as a speed-to-scale advantage,” Zhao said. “The ecosystem here compresses the entire cycle — R&D, supply chain, manufacturing, integration, and customer deployment — into a very tight loop. That means humanoid companies can move from prototype to real-world deployment faster, learn from real operations, and iterate at a pace that’s difficult to match elsewhere.”