<div id="readability-page-1">A desk with a laptop and a stack of books. A shirt waiting to be folded. A kitchen counter, a milk-tea stand and pile of building blocks – all in a single room. Robots of different shapes face their tasks with focus, controlled by a human operator. Pick up. Place. Fold. Repeat. This is not a film set, it is a data collection factory for embodied intelligence – a de facto “data foundry”. The facility, in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, is run by Agibot, a fast-rising robotics company. The data, which is scarce and a key bottleneck, is not only used to train the firm’s in-house models but is also for sale, at prices that can reach several hundred yuan per hour. This non-mainstream monetisation offers a glimpse into how robotics companies – among the most heavily funded and policy-backed sectors in recent years – are scrambling to diversify revenue streams, from hardware sales and data services to leasing and enterprise solutions. The technology is no longer the biggest uncertainty, the business model is. “2026 will be a critical year as humanoid integrators strive to reach commercialisation and build up their ecosystems,” head of China industrials research at Morgan Stanley Zhong Sheng, said, warning of an impending shake-out. Capital floods in, profits remain elusive Capital continues to flood into the burgeoning humanoid robotics sector. Companies including Robotera, X Square Robot, Galbot, Engine AI, Galaxea, Spirit AI, Boundless Power and Tars have announced staggering fresh fundraising rounds this year, pushing some valuations into the tens of billions of dollars. The sector has seen 137 financing deals across 112 related brands in 2026 so far, with disclosed funding exceeding 28.5 billion yuan, according to Chinese corporate data tracker Qichacha. The highlight is Unitree’s listing progress. It made headlines with its STAR Market listing plan, seeking to raise about 4.2 billion yuan (US$614.2 million). While monetisation paths are broadening, most remain in “verification and trial” stages, Zhong added, even as China’s humanoid deliveries are expected to double to 28,000 units this year.   The search for a workable model Unitree stands out for reporting a rare profit, with revenue of 1.71 billion yuan and adjusted net profit of 600 million yuan. Its model is relatively simple, centred on selling robots. It shipped 5,500 humanoids last year – more than 13 times the previous year – with gross margins of core business near 60 per cent. Yet 73.6 per cent of revenue still comes from research and education customers. In a retail push, Unitree opened its first bricks-and-mortar store in Beijing in late April. Meanwhile, Hong Kong-listed UBTech reported revenue of 2 billion yuan last year, up 53.3 per cent, but remains loss-making. Net losses narrowed to 790 million yuan, with a gross margin of 37.7 per cent. The company took efforts in deployment across electric vehicle, battery and electronics factories, and logistics parks, positioning itself as part of industrial upgrading, but heavy R&amp;D spending and the experimental nature of orders continue to weigh on profitability. Its full-size robots, priced at an average of 760,000 yuan per unit, achieved only about 30 per cent of a human worker’s productivity in box-handling tasks in 2025, while the target for this year is 50 per cent, according to Michael Tam, the company’s chief brand officer. UBTech aims to deploy 10,000 robots this year – 10 times last year’s level – and break even within two years. Real-world deployments drive revenue and data, reinforcing a loop between scale, model improvement and use-case expansion. “Scaling production and deployments remain the core challenge,” Tam said. The State Grid Corporation of China is reportedly set to pour 6.8 billion yuan in robot procurement this year – for inspection and high-risk tasks – from robot makers including Unitree, Ubtech, Deep Robotics, Agibot and Fourier. Shanghai-based Agibot, founded in 2023, by former Huawei Technologies engineers, has taken a more expansive approach.  Its business spans multiple robot products, enterprise pilots, leasing, a data collection and trading platform called Maniformer, and investments across the supply chain. It also acts as an original design manufacturer for other robot brands. Founder and chairman Deng Taihua said the company generated 1 billion yuan in revenue in 2025. At the data collection factory, a typical day begins with assigned routines, followed by hours of repetition. Each operator generates four to five hours of usable data a day, with every completed action logged as a data point. The factory produces up to 30,000 such entries daily, according to staffers on site during a recent visit by the South China Morning Post. Clients are usually enterprises seeking task-specific data sets. “For now, the most effective way to drive circulation is through leasing,” said Li Kewei, chief marketing officer of Agibot’s rental platform, named Sharebot. Launched late last year, the platform connects “partners” across China – including those capable of getting orders and secondary development – with robots supplied by Agibot and other brands. Partners rent the machines and deploy them to meet local demand. The business alone closed “hundreds of millions” of yuan in fundraising at the end of April. Profitability vs Scale However, profitability is not the immediate goal; scale is, Li said. The platform aims to standardise the fragmented rental market, with this year’s targets of 10,000 monthly rental orders and 1,500 service providers nationwide. While most major domestic robot makers are holding back on household applications due to their complexity, X Square Robot – which has raised about 3 billion yuan in 2026 alone and counts Xiaomi, Meituan, ByteDance and Alibaba, owner of the SCMP, as backers – says it plans to bring a new robot into homes as early as May. Partnering with on-demand services platform 58.com, the company said its machines will assist human cleaners with household tasks. Looking ahead, “brain” development – the capability of underlying models – and the reliability of dexterous hands will be the key focus in industrial and service settings, Morgan Stanley said in a recent industry note. As Tesla pushes towards mass production of its Optimus robot this year, competition among integrators is set to intensify. Component suppliers are likely to be the first to benefit from the industry’s early growth – echoing the “picks and shovels” dynamic seen in early AI cycle. But while the AI sector has begun to converge on standardised business models, such as “tokenomics”, embodied intelligence remains largely in a phase of verification. Additional reporting by Minxiao Chang </div>

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<p>China's humanoid robotics sector is experiencing a boom, with significant funding and a surge in deliveries expected to double to 28,000 units this year. Companies like Unitree and UBTech are exploring diverse revenue streams, but profitability remains a challenge. Unitree reported a profit with a simple sales model, while UBTech aims to break even within two years despite losses. The State Grid Corporation plans to invest heavily in robot procurement. Agibot, a new player, is diversifying its offerings and generating substantial revenue through data collection and leasing services.</p>

Hype or real: China’s robot boom faces reality check as commercialisation lags