China Ships 84.7% of the World's Humanoid Robots

84.7%

That's the number that jumps out of every 2026 report on embodied AI and humanoid robots.

China shipped 84.7% of the world's humanoid robots in 2025. For every 10 humanoid robots built last year, more than 8 came from Chinese factories.

This isn't a PowerPoint story. Unitree shipped 5,500 units in 2025. Zhiyuan (智元) shipped over 5,000. The combined output of these two companies exceeds every other player in the world combined.

2026 is being called "the mass production inflection year" for humanoid robots. I read three major reports — from Robot Lecture Hall (机器人大讲堂), 36Kr Research Institute, and HCR (慧辰股份) — and pulled out the signal.

1. The Market Reality: RMB 1 Trillion

36Kr's headline number: China's embodied AI market grew from RMB 213.3B in 2018 to RMB 915B in 2025. It's expected to cross RMB 1 trillion in 2026.

Zooming into humanoid robots specifically, HCR gives a more granular trajectory:

Critical caveat from HCR: growth decelerates after 2028. The competition shifts from "can we build it" to "can we deliver reliably and prove ROI."

2. Capital Inflow: 4x in One Year

The funding numbers are staggering:

• RMB 33.47B ($4.6B) in the first 11 months of 2025 — 4x the same period in 2024
• Over 305 funding rounds totaling RMB 38B+ for the full year
• Over 600 investing institutions participated

Humanoid robotics alone captured 35% of all robotics funding in 2025, overtaking industrial robots, service robots, and core components. Capital has voted: this is the inflection.

3. The Tech Stack: World Models > Hardware

All three reports converge on the same technical thesis: world models are the critical path to AGI in robotics.

"Stanford's team demonstrated algorithms that can predict object motion trajectories. Carnegie Mellon released a 100,000-hour dataset of robot manipulation videos covering home and factory environments."

The end-to-end embodied large model has graduated from labs. In a pilot factory in Shenzhen, robots follow voice commands like "put the red part in bin #3" with >95% accuracy.

Robot Lecture Hall's tech stack summary is the cleanest I've seen:

4. The Two Leaders: Unitree vs. Zhiyuan

HCR's report has the hardest quantitative data:

Everyone else — Ubtech, Leju, Galaxy General, Songyan Power — is in the second tier.

The two strategies are already diverging:

• Unitree path: cost-driven, motion-control-first, primarily education/research revenue
• Zhiyuan path: AI-first, deep integration into industrial manufacturing and logistics

Product prices span from RMB 10K to RMB 700K ($1,400 to $97,000). No homogeneous competition — the industrial tier has formed.

2026: leading factories are scaling from thousands to tens of thousands of units per year.

5. The BOM: 62% Goes to Brain + Joints

HCR's cost breakdown is worth memorizing:

The 62% category is where the bottlenecks are — and where localization gains will compound. It's also the primary reason Chinese humanoids cost ~50% of comparable overseas products.

6. Regional Clusters: Three Cities, Three Strategies

The differentiation is real: Beijing = innovation origin, Shanghai = application showcase, Shenzhen = ecosystem chain.

7. The Commercialization Path: Three Jumps

All three reports converge on a "ToB-first, multi-scenario gradient" model:

The fundamental tension right now: 70% of projects come from universities; 70% of money comes from state-owned enterprises. True commercialization — enterprises buying because it pays back — won't be proven until 2028+.

8. Reality Check: Three Boundaries

After reading 100+ pages across three reports, here's what the reports don't emphasize but I think matters:

1. 84.7% ≠ tech dominance

The global humanoid robot base is tiny (~10-20K units in 2025). China's share reflects supply chain depth and cost advantage, not a model layer lead. The US still leads on AI models and advanced sensors.

2. The real TAM bottleneck isn't production — it's ROI

A humanoid robot with a BOM of RMB 100-300K ($14K-$42K) replacing a worker earning RMB 120K/year ($17K) takes 2-3 years to break even. The explosion only happens when price hits RMB 50K ($7K) and reliability meets factory floor standards. This is why HCR specifically calls out "post-2028 growth deceleration."

3. World models are real progress, but nowhere near done

Current end-to-end models perform at 95%+ in controlled settings. In the wild — unfamiliar objects, unseen terrain, unexpected disturbances — they still fail almost every time. The hard problem isn't motion control. It's understanding the physical world.

What I'd Watch

Three signals for the next 18 months, in order:

1. Unitree and Zhiyuan's 2026 delivery numbers — are we talking 10K or 50K? The gap tells you if robots are real products or glorified demos.

2. BOM cost trajectory — the fastest path to market expansion isn't better AI; it's cheaper joints. Watch the actuator supply chain.

3. The first non-government repeat buyer — the day a factory chain places its third order without subsidy is the day the industry actually arrived.

Sources: Robot Lecture Hall (机器人大讲堂) — 2026 Embodied Intelligence & Humanoid Robot Industry Report; 36Kr Research Institute — 2026 Embodied Intelligence Industry Development Report; HCR (慧辰股份) — 2026 China Embodied Intelligence Industry Series Report: Humanoid Robot Edition

Found this useful? Follow me on dev.to/lanternproton — I write about the intersection of AI infrastructure, strategy, and the semiconductor supply chain. No hype, just frameworks.