This isn't AI. But that's not a human either! UBTECH's UWORLD U1 during a photoshoot. In the coming decades, telling humans and robots apart might become impossible.

This robot can roller-skate! 🛼 AGIBOT just showed its A3 Ultra on skates. Humanoids just got a lot more interesting.

A Unitree G1 is driving a go-kart. Tesla's Robotaxis drive themselves. Could humanoids drive regular cars instead?

Top 50 Robotics Founders 🇨🇳 Wang Xingxing | Zhejiang Sci-Tech 🇨🇳 Deng Taihua | UESTC 🇵🇱 Karol Hausman | Warsaw Tech 🇺🇸 Elon Musk | UPenn 🇩🇪 David Reger | No university Tsinghua leads with 9 founders China leads with 30 Companies ranked by valuation. Nationalities approximate.

Are humanoid robots joining workforce? China’s 2025 humanoid robot shipments: 🔬 Research & education | 42% 🎭 Entertainment & interaction | 35% 🗄️ Data collection | 19% 🏭 Industry & logistics | 4% Only 4% were shipped for industrial and logistics work. This highlights two major challenges: 1. Robot intelligence is still too unreliable for many workplace tasks. 2. Deploying robots at scale remains difficult. Source: New Strategy Research & HRAA, 2025–2026 industry report.

Robotics is entering the API era. ★ Dream Labs | Dream-1 | From $3/hr ★ Google DeepMind | ER 2 | $1 in/$5 out ★ Generalist | Waitlists ★Physical Intelligence | Waitlists Robot manufacturers can focus on hardware instead of building their own AI models. Specialized companies can provide robot intelligence through APIs. The challenge is making these models reliable across different robots and tasks.

Anthropic to IPO at $2tn market cap 2x more valuable than all SaaS companies combined P/s multiple is way higher too as the market is pricing its rapid growth 2024 Rev: $400m 2025 Rev: $4.6bn 2026 Rev (annualized): $44bn

Automakers are entering robotics. 🇨🇳 XPENG | IRON | $900M+ raised 🇨🇳 Chery | AiMOGA 🇯🇵 Mitsubishi × Highlanders 🇯🇵 Toyota × Walden | $300M raised Car manufacturers are becoming robot manufacturers.

End effector types for robots: 🇨🇳 Unitree Dex1-1 | 1 DoF 🇺🇸 Sunday Robotics Memo | 4 DoF 🇰🇷 Tesollo DELTO | 12 DoF 🇸🇬 Sharpa Wave | 22 DoF Grippers, 3 fingers or 5 fingers... The best choice depends on the task. Sunday reports 99.1% laundry-folding success with its 4-DoF hands.

Three open-source humanoids: ✸ Asimov 1 🇸🇬 | 120 cm | 35 kg ✸ RoboParty RP1 🇨🇳 | 135 cm | 39 kg ✸ ROBOTIS K1 🇰🇷 | 136.6 cm | 35 kg Built for developers, researchers, and the open-source robotics community.

Major robotics funding rounds in Oct '26 🇺🇸 ICON | $200M 🇨🇳 Astribot | ~$149M 🇺🇸 MMI | $125M 🇺🇸 Parallel Systems | $100M

What is 🇨🇳China doing differently? China is seen as frontrunner in robotics. As DroidUp's bionic robot plays with children, take a look at the numbers: An ecosystem at scale: ✸ 243 robotics firm ✸ 161 companies focused on humanoids ✸ ~19K humanoids shipped | H1 2026 That scale is becoming part of everyday life. Starting in schools: > UBTECH | Robotics education in 3K+ schools > 90K+ students in a 2025 robotics & AI contest Then into shops, events and sports: → Galbot | 100+ robot shops across 20+ cities → Qingtian Rental | 200 rentals per day → WHRG 2026 | 2,056 robots across 666 teams A generation growing up around robots. A public getting used to living alongside them.

RAI Institute is robotics' wildest lab. Some of its robots: ✸ Robot bicycle   ✸ Wheeled biped   ✸ Juggling robot Founded in 2022 by Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert SoftBank sold Boston Dynamics to Hyundai. Now it's reportedly buying RAI. Raibert: robotics' exit king?

The most human-like walks in robotics: ✸ Figure 03 🇺🇸 | Figure AI ✸ IRON 🇨🇳 | XPENG ✸ G1 🇨🇳 | Unitree

Deployment is still the biggest challenge. According to Capgemini, 76% of robotics execs say so. It's not just technical. Adoption matters too. One small step: 🇬🇧The UK is backing 8 Robotics Adoption Hubs with $53M. ✸They'll offer advice, studies, trials and training. ✸Companies can test before investing. Building robots is hard. Getting customers to use them can be just as hard. Could adoption programs close the gap?

“Our world is designed for the human form.” Brett Adcock said this when Figure AI emerged from stealth in 2023. It's one of the biggest reasons behind the humanoid design. Imagine we've completely solved robotics and AI. Now imagine the ideal robot is an eight-legged mechanical spider. Would we rebuild every factory, supermarket, and home to accommodate it? Even if a better design exists, adapting the entire world to it would be incredibly difficult. So instead of adapting the world to robots, we're adapting robots to the world.

How much can wheeled humanoids lift? 🇨🇳 S1 | 50 kg | Galbot 🇰🇷 FRIDAY | 20 kg | Holiday Robotics 🇨🇳 Cruzr S2 | 15 kg | UBTECH 🇨🇳 Cruzr Y1  | 15 kg | UBTECH Payload capacity matters for industrial robots.

Why does this robot feel like an NPC? Humanoids walk better than ever. Yet several problems remain: ✸ Many demos still rely on teleoperation. ✸ Robot intelligence remains unsolved. ✸ Whole-body control is still limited. ✸ Skills rarely transfer across robots. Walking ≠ Intelligence.

Latest robot hands: 🇺🇸 Boston Dynamics | new Atlas hand 🇨🇳 Unitree | Dex5-S 🇵🇱 Clone | Torso 3 hand 🇨🇳 Wuji | Hand 2 Four new-generation hands. Four very different design philosophies.

Boston Dynamics has a new CEO: Rohit Prasad. What does this mean? At Amazon, he led Alexa AI: ✸ Built and scaled Alexa ✸ Created Amazon Nova models ✸ Led Amazon's AGI efforts He is an AI-first executive. Its last two CEOs, Marc Raibert and Robert Playter, were hardware-first leaders. Boston Dynamics is known for agile robots. This change at the top may signal a bigger push into AI.