China leads early humanoid robot market

China is pulling ahead in humanoid robots not by perfecting kung fu demos but by shipping units, according to TechCrunch and industry analysts. Unitree delivered roughly 36 times more humanoid robots last year than US rivals Figure and Tesla, Selina Xu of Eric Schmidt’s office told TechCrunch, in a market that still totaled only 13,317 units worldwide.

The numbers matter because humanoid robotics is still in the phase where iteration speed and field feedback decide who sets de facto standards. China’s advantage, Xu said, rests on a hardware supply chain built up through the electric-vehicle boom—sensors, batteries and manufacturing capacity that can turn new designs into production runs quickly. At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, phone maker Honor is expected to unveil its first humanoid robot, underscoring how wide the corporate funnel has become: not just startups but consumer-electronics firms with existing procurement and assembly pipelines.

TechCrunch describes a shift from “demo-driven excitement” to “operations-driven adoption.” That shift changes what counts as progress. A robot that can flip on stage is a marketing asset; a robot that can run through a shift without falling, overheating, or damaging equipment is an industrial tool. Yuli Zhao, chief strategy officer at Galbot, told TechCrunch that customers increasingly ask whether a robot can operate stably in real environments and “actually take work off people’s plates.” In practice, that means metrics such as mean time between failures, uptime under dust and vibration, energy use per kilogram moved, grip reliability across object shapes, and safety certification for working near humans.

China’s domestic context makes those metrics easier to test at scale. Policy has flagged robotics as a priority since “Made in China 2025,” originally aimed at factory automation. Now, as “embodied AI” improves—vision-language-action models guiding machines in physical space—officials and companies are treating humanoids as a continuation of industrial upgrading. That creates a loop: factories and state-linked buyers offer pilot deployments; pilots generate failure data; suppliers adjust components; new models ship quickly into the same ecosystem.

Money follows the same loop. TechCrunch notes Unitree was valued at about $3 billion after a Series C round and has discussed a future IPO valuation as high as $7 billion. Galbot has raised more than $300 million in fresh funding, also reportedly reaching a $3 billion valuation. The funding is not just for R&D; it pays for production tooling, service networks, spare parts, and the unglamorous work of making robots maintainable.

US firms are not standing still. Foundation, a US startup, says it plans to build 50,000 humanoid robots by the end of 2027, and American companies are also pushing beyond showpieces toward deployments. But China is already targeting both low-cost mass-market models and higher-end industrial and rehabilitation uses, according to TrendForce, while the global market remains small enough that early volume can shape interfaces, parts compatibility and customer expectations.

The open question, TechCrunch notes, is software: where Chinese humanoid firms truly stand on integrated AI systems and reliability outside controlled demonstrations. For now, the lead is being measured less in viral videos than in how many robots can be kept running after the cameras leave.

In the Sistine Chapel, restorers can remove a film with Japanese rice paper and distilled water. On a factory floor, every failure leaves a log file and a repair ticket—and the company that collects the most of them early tends to learn the fastest.