Humanoid Robot Sales Surge but R&D Costs Keep China's Dobot, Ubtech Loss-Making

(Yicai) April 2 -- Dobot Robotics and Ubtech Robotics both reported strong revenue growth last year as the commercialization of embodied intelligence accelerates, although the two Hong Kong-listed robot makers remain loss-making due to continued heavy research and development investment.Dobot posted revenue of CNY492 million (USD71.4 million) last year, up 32 percent from a year earlier, while its net loss narrowed by CNY11.3 million to CNY84 million (by USD1.6 million to USD12.2 million). Ubtech reported revenue of CNY2 billion (USD290 million), a 53 percent increase, while its net loss narrowed by CNY370 million to CNY790 million.According to their latest financial reports, Dobot launched several humanoid robots as well as quadruped and hexapod bionic robots last year. Ubtech, meanwhile, increased sales of full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots to almost 1,080 units from single digits the previous year.Ubtech generated CNY820 million in revenue from full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robot products and solutions last year, a 22-fold increase from the previous year, and accounting for 41 percent of total revenue, making it the company’s fastest-growing business segment.Dobot entered the embodied intelligence sector relatively late, with revenue from embodied intelligent robots reaching CNY20 million last year, accounting for 4 percent of total revenue, although this segment grew more than fourfold from the year before.Both companies continued to increase investment in embodied intelligence R&D. Dobot’s R&D spending rose about 60 percent from a year earlier to CNY115 million, with much of the increase directed toward embodied intelligence. Ubtech’s R&D expenses rose 6 percent to CNY508 million, including CNY270 million spent on developing full-size embodied intelligent humanoid robots.Heavy investment in embodied intelligence remains the main reason Dobot is still unprofitable. Excluding more than CNY40 million in R&D spending on embodied intelligence, the company would have nearly broken even last year. For Ubtech, although rising humanoid robot sales helped boost revenue, accounts receivable remained high, exceeding 90 percent of annual revenue and reaching CNY1.8 billion, up 40 percent from a year earlier.Industrial Deployment Seen as Key Next StepAt earnings briefings following the release of the financial reports, management from both companies said humanoid robots representing embodied intelligence are likely to be deployed first in industrial and commercial scenarios before eventually entering the home services market.“Research was the main market last year, and the next step will be to enter the industrial and commercial markets,” said Liu Peichao, founder and chief executive of Dobot. He added that robots’ running and jumping capabilities have largely reached practical thresholds, with future development expected to focus on operational scenarios in manufacturing and interactive scenarios in home and service sectors.Liu said embodied intelligence robots are already capable of performing component handling tasks in industrial environments and that the company has secured several orders. Starting from the second quarter, some simple operational tasks are expected to be gradually implemented.After breakthroughs are achieved in industrial operational capabilities, the trillion-yuan market potential could be unlocked, he added. Dobot expects shipments of its quadruped robots to reach the tens of thousands within one to two years, with a promotional target of about 10,000 units this year.Liu also highlighted challenges related to data and model development for embodied intelligence. “Last year, the industry accumulated less than 30,000 hours of valuable data,” Liu said. “There may be hundreds of thousands of hours of data with limited value that can only be used for pre-training, making it difficult to achieve generalization and improve operational accuracy.” He added that Dobot is studying data feedback mechanisms and hopes to collect data from different scenarios through the 100,000 robotic arms it produces annually.In terms of model development, the combination of vision-language-action models and reinforcement learning was already being implemented last year, Liu said, adding that developing a world model remains the ultimate goal. Achieving this will require tens of millions or even more than 100 million data points and may take three to five years.Ubtech’s management also said the company is advancing validation of the VLA technical pathway and developing world models. Its R&D budget is expected to increase to CNY700 million by 2026, with a focus on embodied AI foundation models, world models, and product upgrades.Editor: Emmi Laine