Beijing showcased China’s industrial policy and its push to dominate humanoid robots and the future of manufacturing in the annual CCTV Spring Festival gala on Monday.
Four rising humanoid robot startups – Unitree Robotics, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab – demonstrated their products at the gala, a televised event and touchstone for China comparable to the Super Bowl for the United States.
The programme featured humanoid robots performing martial arts and sophisticated fight sequences waving swords, poles and nunchucks in close proximity to human children performers.
IPOs Planned
The hype surrounding China’s humanoid robot sector comes as major players including AgiBot and Unitree prepare for initial public offerings this year, and domestic artificial intelligence startups release a raft of frontier models during the lucrative nine-day Lunar New Year public holiday.
Last year’s gala stunned viewers with 16 full-size Unitree humanoids twirling handkerchiefs and dancing in unison with human performers.
Unitree’s founder met President Xi Jinping weeks later at a high-profile tech symposium – the first of its kind since 2018.
Xi has met five robotics startup founders in the past year, comparable to the four electric vehicle and four semiconductor entrepreneurs he met in the same timeframe, giving the nascent sector unusual visibility.
China’s Strengths
Behind the spectacle of robots running marathons and executing kung-fu kicks and backflips, China has positioned robotics and AI at the heart of its next-generation AI+ manufacturing strategy, betting that productivity gains from automation will offset pressures from its ageing workforce.
China accounted for 90% of the roughly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped globally last year, far ahead of U.S. rivals including Tesla’s Optimus, according to research firm Omdia.
Elon Musk has said he expects his biggest competitor to be Chinese companies as he pivots Tesla toward a focus on embodied AI and its flagship humanoid Optimus.
(With inputs from Reuters)
