Chinese robots

China shipped 97% of the world's humanoid robots in the first half of 2026 verified Aug 2026, and two companies, AgiBot and Unitree, shipped three quarters of those. Most units still go to universities, exhibitions and rental firms. Prices for entertainment-class robots have collapsed by 72% in two years while factory robots have held theirs. This is the field as it stands.

The market on one screen

Three things are true at once. The volume is real: about 13,000 humanoids shipped worldwide in 2025 contested, with analysts ranging from 13,000 to 16,000, and 19,100 in the first six months of 2026 alone. The money is real: Unitree booked ¥1.70 billion of revenue in 2025 at a 60% gross margin verified. And the use cases are still thin: 73.6% of Unitree's humanoid revenue in the first nine months of 2025 came from research and education buyers, and half to two thirds of the 9% labelled "industrial" was corporate tours verified. All three matter when a maker says its factory pilots are going well.

Nine robots to know

Each card links to a rigged drawing, a spec sheet and the engineering choices behind it. Heights are from maker pages unless chipped otherwise, and every drawing on this page uses the same scale, 352 units per metre, so you can compare them in the line-up at the end.

• HumanoidG1Unitree · Hangzhou1.32 m23 to 43 DoF¥85k
• Humanoid · full sizeH2Unitree · Hangzhou1.82 m31 DoFUS$29.9k
• Humanoid · budgetR1Unitree · Hangzhou1.23 m20 to 26 DoF¥29.9k
• QuadrupedGo2Unitree · Hangzhou0.40 m tall12 motorsfrom US$1,600
• Humanoid · industrialWalker S2UBTech · Shenzhen1.76 m52 DoFself battery swap
• Humanoid · serviceA2AgiBot · Shanghai1.75 m49+ DoFfrom US$44.6k
• Humanoid · careGR-3Fourier · Shanghai1.65 m55 DoFprice contested
• Humanoid · human-likeIRONXpeng · Guangzhou1.78 m76 + 21 per handprice not public
• Wheeled semi-humanoidG1Galbot · Beijing1.73 m, reaches 2.4 m¥630k

Unitree 宇树科技: the volume leader

Unitree is in Hangzhou, a five-hour train from Shenzhen, so plan it as a separate leg. Wang Xingxing 王兴兴 founded it in 2016 and still holds 68.78% of the votes through dual-class shares verified. The company listed on Shanghai's STAR Market on 19 Aug 2026 at ¥150.80 a share, raised about ¥6.1 billion contested against a ¥4.2 billion target, and closed its first day at ¥845, up more than 460% verified. That put its market value near ¥342 billion, about US$47 billion estimate, on 2025 revenue of ¥1.70 billion and statutory net profit of ¥278 million contested, since an adjusted figure of about ¥600 million also circulates.

The prospectus is the single best public document on the economics of a Chinese robot maker, so the numbers that matter are worth memorising. Gross margin about 60% verified: humanoids 62.4% and quadrupeds 56.5% in the first half of 2025. Research and development at 7.7% of revenue in the first nine months of 2025, down from 31.4% in 2023 verified. Bought-in parts (battery cells, compute modules, memory, some sensors) were only 14 to 18% of cost, because Unitree makes its own joint modules, motor drivers and battery management boards, and designed its own planetary tooth profile to survive leg shock loads verified. Overseas sales were 43.65% of 2025 main-business revenue unverified. Guidance for the first half of 2026 was about ¥1.1 billion, up 35.6 to 45.4% verified: a sharp slowdown from the 336% growth of 2025 even though unit counts kept rising, which tells you the average selling price is falling.

Every Unitree joint shares one design: a low-inertia, high-speed internal-rotor actuator built around a permanent magnet synchronous motor, a low-ratio planetary reducer (the quasi-direct-drive recipe), dual encoders, an industrial crossed roller bearing at the output, a hollow shaft with the wiring run through it, and local air cooling verified. Knee torque is 90 N·m on the base G1 and 120 N·m on the EDU, 360 N·m on the H2's legs and the B2, 45 N·m on the Go2. Firmware updates arrive over the air. The choice of low gear ratios is why these robots can fall, be kicked in demos and get up: the joints are backdrivable and feel force through motor current, at the cost of holding torque and battery life.

Unitree G1

The engineering story of the G1 is the bill of materials. A China Post Securities teardown in Mar 2026 put the base unit at ¥41,574 estimate: 23 joint modules for ¥27,500 (14 small ones at ¥1,000 and 9 large ones at ¥1,500), the lidar at ¥3,840, the depth camera at ¥1,869, the compute board with memory and storage at ¥1,415, and ¥3,000 of processing and assembly. Inside a small 60 mm joint the planetary reducer is ¥300, the motor ¥200, the encoder ¥200 and the structure ¥150, with the driver board taking the rest. A US analyst arrived at a higher US$8,976 contested for a different configuration. Either way, actuators are half to two thirds of the cost and Unitree's in-house motors, gearboxes, lidar and cameras run at 30 to 40% of the price of Western equivalents. Figure 16.15 draws the split.

Unitree H2

Read the H2 price history as a chart of the whole industry: ¥199,000 at launch in Oct 2025, US$29,900 eleven months later verified. Note what Unitree left out. No lidar on a US$30k full-size robot, a two-camera head and learned depth instead, because lidar is a ¥3,840 line item that a good stereo network can replace indoors. Note also what it added: a titanium and aluminium shell, a 3-DoF waist and 7-DoF arms, which are the parts a manipulation researcher needs. The H2 is a research chassis first, and the NVIDIA reference design confirms who it is for.

Unitree R1

Unitree Go2, and the bigger dogs

The dog still pays Unitree's bills: quadrupeds were about 65% of 2024 revenue and roughly half of 2025 unverified. The Go2 also carries the most important security story in the industry. On 20 Sep 2025 two researchers disclosed UniPwn: the Bluetooth Low Energy channel that hands a Unitree robot its Wi-Fi name and password does not filter input, every unit shares one hardcoded AES key that had already leaked, and one infected robot can infect any Unitree robot in Bluetooth range. It affects Go2, B2, G1 and H1 verified. A separate analysis found the G1 sending telemetry to servers in China about every five minutes without telling the owner verified, exact data types unconfirmed. Unitree declined to comment on the BLE flaw in Sep 2025, and whether a fix has shipped remains an open question unverified.

UBTech 优必选: the industrial one

UBTech is based in Shenzhen's Nanshan District. It listed in Hong Kong in Dec 2023 as the first pure-play humanoid IPO, which means its numbers are audited. FY2025 revenue was about ¥2.0 billion, up 53.3%, with full-size humanoids at ¥820 million, up 2,203.7%, on 1,079 units sold, more than 80% of them into industrial settings verified. In the first half of 2026 revenue was ¥1,269 million, up 104.2%; humanoids were ¥590.3 million of it on 921 full-size units (45 a year earlier); gross margin rose to 44.7% and the net loss narrowed 23% to ¥338.8 million verified, interim. Divide revenue by units and you get an average of about ¥641,000 per robot, about US$89,000 derived.

Three more UBTech facts matter. It bought 43% of Zhejiang Fenglong, a listed actuator-parts maker, for ¥1.665 billion in Dec 2025 verified: vertical integration into joints, the same lesson Unitree's margins teach. It raised HK$2.41 billion in Jul 2025 and HK$3.11 billion in Nov 2025 in share placements verified, so it is spending investors' money to hit a 5,000-unit year. And its U1 consumer humanoid took 13,361 orders by mid-Sep 2026 at about US$30,000, with a 19-DoF head that drives about 30 facial expressions on silicone skin, still hand-made; deliveries began 15 Sep 2026 verified.

AgiBot 智元机器人: the largest shipper

AgiBot is in Shanghai's Lingang zone, founded in Feb 2023 by two ex-Huawei engineers, chairman Deng Taihua 邓泰华 and CTO Peng Zhihui 彭志辉, who is famous on Bilibili as Zhihui Jun 稚晖君 verified. It shipped 5,168 humanoids in 2025 by Omdia's count, passed its 10,000th unit on 30 Mar 2026 and 15,000 by Jun 2026, and led the world with about 8,400 units in the first half of 2026 verified. Revenue went from ¥0.3 million in year one to more than ¥60 million in year two to more than ¥1 billion in 2025 verified. It began a Hong Kong IPO process on 24 Jul 2026 with a target valuation of HK$40 to 50 billion (US$5.1 to 6.4 billion) verified, well below the US$10 to 15 billion private marks that circulated in mid-2026 contested. It also controls about 63.6% of the STAR-listed materials firm Swancor after a ¥2.1 billion deal in Jul 2025 and denies that this is a backdoor listing verified.

AgiBot is the company to study if you want to understand how a Chinese maker turns volume into a data business. It ships the robots, rents them through SHAREBOT, collects demonstrations in its own staged facility, publishes the dataset, trains the VLA model and open-sources the software stack of its X1 under the Mulan licence software verified. Each step feeds the next.

Fourier 傅利叶: the care robot

Fourier matters less for its unit count than for its channel. It already sells rehabilitation machines into hospitals, so it has procurement relationships, service staff and medical certifications that a startup from a Shenzhen incubator lacks. That is the pattern that works: a humanoid sold through an existing account list beats a better humanoid sold cold. The price spread on the GR-3, from about US$27,500 to US$120,000 for the same robot depending on who asks and where contested, is also the clearest example on this page of the gap between China list prices and export prices, which run 30 to 200% higher.

Xpeng 小鹏: the carmaker's humanoid

Xpeng is the Guangzhou carmaker building humanoids. The car company revealed the current IRON on 5 Nov 2025: 1.78 m, 70 kg, a humanoid spine, "bionic muscles", full-body flexible skin, a 3D curved display for a face, 22-DoF hands, three in-house Turing AI chips rated at 2,250 TOPS together, an all-solid-state battery and a VLA 2.0 model verified, Xpeng. The walk was so human that He Xiaopeng had staff cut the leg skin open on stage to prove no person was inside. In Feb 2026 the company announced a 110,000 m² humanoid production base in Guangzhou's Tianhe District, and on 8 Sep 2026 the line switched on and an IRON walked off it under its own power, with more than 80% of core processes automated verified, Xpeng.

Read IRON as a supply-chain statement rather than a robot. A carmaker already owns the automated line, the battery contracts, the chip team and the driver-assistance model; the humanoid is a second product on the same stack. The switch from all-solid-state to semi-solid batteries within ten months verified is a useful reminder that even a carmaker's battery roadmap slips. The DoF count moving between 62, 72 and 76 across reports contested shows why it matters which count includes the hands.

Galbot 银河通用: no legs

Galbot was founded in May 2023 by Wang He 王鹤 of Peking University unverified and is the clearest bet on wheels among the well-funded Chinese makers. Its customer list is state energy and telecom money as much as retailers, which is how a company with a few hundred robots in the field raises more than US$800 million. The unstaffed kiosk is a smart first product: a fixed, known set of 5,000 objects on shelves the company designs, indoors, with no people to bump into. Compare that with a factory pilot on someone else's line and you can see why Galbot's success rates are high.

The rest of the field

Everyone below is real, and most of them will be at the trade fairs you attend. Prices are China list prices where a source gave one. Chinese names are the ones on their business cards.

Two groups are covered elsewhere: Pudu 普渡科技 of Shenzhen, whose delivery and cleaning robots already work in restaurants and buildings, is in Robots already at work; the component suppliers behind all of these, from Leadshine's frameless motors to Tongchuan's harmonic reducers, are in Supply chain, money and geopolitics.

To scale

Price against joints

A humanoid with 23 joints costs ¥85,000 and one with 52 costs about ¥641,000, but the extra ¥556,000 does not buy 29 joints. It buys torque (360 N·m legs against 90), payload (15 kg against a fist), hands, a battery swap system, industrial certification, a sales engineer and a warranty that a factory will accept. The cheap end of the chart is a consumer electronics business with 60% gross margins on volume. The expensive end is a capital equipment business with 40% margins on service and relationships. Decide which one you are selling into before you price anything.

Where they are

The price war and the rental collapse

The price war is concentrated in one segment. Unitree's average humanoid price fell 72% in two years verified; the G1 went from ¥99,000 to ¥85,000 and from US$16,000 to US$13,500; the H2 from US$40,900 to US$29,900 in eleven months; the R1 Air reached ¥29,900 and Noetix's Bumi ¥9,118 after subsidies verified. Meanwhile industrial humanoids fell only about 13% in a year and some makers raised prices 5 to 15% on component costs verified, press. The Walker S2 at ¥641,000 to ¥760,000 and the Galbot G1 at about ¥700,000 have not moved. There are two markets wearing the same word.

The rental market was about ¥1 billion in 2025 and is forecast at ¥10 billion or more in 2026 Xinhua, and more than 153,000 robot rental businesses are registered in China registrations, which counts registrations rather than active firms. The operators are candid: the robots are "oversized toys" that need human operators, novelty fades, joints overheat when packed together, and dexterous hands are expensive, fragile and short-lived verified. The state planning agency reached the same conclusion: on 27 Nov 2025 the NDRC warned that more than 150 firms make humanoids, over half of them newcomers, many "highly similar", and pushed for consolidation and research over output verified. The word for this is involution. The same state keeps feeding the boom: a ¥1 trillion national venture guidance fund over 20 years, Hangzhou subsidies up to ¥5 million a project, Shenzhen's ¥10 billion fund, and State Grid's ¥6.8 billion procurement plan for about 8,500 robots in 2026 verified.

Spectacle is the demand engine. Unitree H1s dancing on the 2025 Spring Festival Gala started the rental boom verified. The World Humanoid Robot Games grew from 280 teams and 500 robots in Aug 2025, when Unitree topped the medal table with 11, to 666 teams and 2,056 robots from 16 countries in Aug 2026 verified; a week after its IPO Unitree came last in its first 100 m heat, and some robots tripped, broke or caught fire unverified. Honor's humanoid ran the Beijing half marathon in 50:26 verified. EngineAI launched a combat league. All of it is free failure data in public, and all of it sells robots to universities and event firms rather than factories.

Security, service and the Southeast Asia angle

Three of the makers on this page have a Southeast Asian footprint you can verify. Unitree has Weston Robot in Singapore and Malaysia and Halo Robotics in Jakarta, both offering training, maintenance, firmware and spare parts verified Sep 2026; whether Weston's rights are exclusive is contested. Deep Robotics has an X30 inspecting Singapore Power tunnels verified. UBTech's export deal is with Honda's trading arm in Japan verified. For AgiBot, Galbot, EngineAI, Leju, Fourier, Dobot, LimX and Astribot no Southeast Asian service partner was found in public sources as of Sep 2026.

Warranties are short and the installed base is young. A US$13,500 G1 carries 8 months of cover, an H2 8 to 12, a Go2 Air 6, and most of the units in the world shipped in the last 18 months verified. The out-of-warranty wave is arriving in 2026 and 2027. Combine that with UniPwn and the telemetry finding, and with buyers in Southeast Asia that include utilities, airports and governments, and you have a concrete reason for a third party to exist between the Chinese maker and the local customer: after-sales service, security audits and firmware control.

Terms in this chapter