One giant leap for humanoid kind

Global pacesetter

The global market for embodied intelligence robots is expected to expand from 94.9 billion yuan ($14.06 billion) in 2025 to 408.4 billion yuan by 2030, according to a paper jointly released by Tencent Cloud and Frost &Sullivan, a US-based consultancy.

Among them, China is the global leader.

By 2030, China is projected to become one of the largest markets, reaching 151.1 billion yuan and accounting for about 37 percent of the global market, according to the 2026 Global White Paper on Embodied AI Technology Innovation and Applications.

Liang Liang, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, said China accounted for 90 percent of global humanoid robot production in 2025.

Global shipments of humanoid robots in the first half of 2026 reached 19,100, with Chinese manufacturers making up 97 percent of the total, a Bloomberg and Smart Analytics Global report released last month showed.

Chinese humanoid robot developers have set their sights on shaping the industry, as evidenced by the advances on display during the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July.

Tencent unveiled a series of technology and product upgrades in embodied intelligence and intelligent agents. For embodied AI agents, the company introduced the TairosAgent framework and the Apexio agent, which can integrate the robot's left and right brains, cerebellum and body, enabling continuous perception, decision-making and action.

The Tairos platform, launched in 2025, received an upgrade. It will provide open-source capabilities and services, lowering barriers across the development process and helping bring embodied AI into real-world scenarios faster.

"Robotics is developing rapidly, but the entire industry is working hard to bring these technologies into real-world applications," said Zhang Zhengyou, chief scientist of Tencent and director of the Tencent Robotics X Laboratory.

Zhang believes the robotics industry may follow a path similar to the smartphone market.

Some robot makers may develop a complete ecosystem, covering everything from hardware to software and applications, while others may focus on robot hardware while separating intelligent systems, similar to the Android model.

"There is no single best approach for embodied intelligence companies. Apple, Google and Samsung have all succeeded with different models, and the world will not be built around just one approach," Zhang noted.

Chen Yudong, director of heterogeneous computing research and development at Tencent Cloud, Tencent Holdings Ltd's cloud computing business, said the demand for computing power in embodied intelligence has grown particularly fast over the past year, with areas such as autonomous driving seeing growth rates of 200 to 300 percent.

Zheng Yong, founder and CEO of Geek+, a Beijing-based intelligent robot company, said the value of embodied AI will ultimately be proven in real customer scenarios. "This has been our focus over the past 11 years and will remain our priority for the next decade," Zheng said.

At the conference, Geek+ unveiled Gravity, a unified embodied AI framework for long-horizon complex tasks, along with its core foundation model, the Gravity 4D. The framework is designed to give robots "physical intelligence", enabling them to understand the 3D world, think before acting, and improve function through real-world deployment.

The company also launched its one core, dual engine strategy for advancing general-purpose embodied intelligence, which links model improvement, data feedback and large-scale deployment, to accelerate the commercialization of embodied AI.

"Through the Gino Eco ecosystem initiative, we hope to work with the industry to turn technological visions into measurable business value and productivity gains," Zheng said.

Chen Xi, co-founder of Geek+, who is also CEO of Geek+ Embodied Intelligence Technology Co, said about 30 percent of the company's business comes from China and 70 percent from overseas markets. It serves leading customers across sectors including global e-commerce, healthcare, retail, automotive and new energy manufacturing.

According to Chen, a large number of embodied AI companies emerged in 2024. As a company that has been deeply involved in robotics for years, it recognized the shift in the industry and established an AI R&D team that year to focus on general-purpose robots and general embodied AI models.

"We have now deployed more than 72,000 robots, with tens of thousands of workstations operating in real-world scenarios, providing valuable sources of data for continuous improvement," said Chen.

In Chen's view, for robotics companies the key challenge will be building multi-agent systems that allow different types of robots to work together efficiently in business processes and handle more complex and unexpected scenarios.

From a market perspective, embodied intelligent robots are at a critical stage of transition from technological accumulation to rapid growth, said the paper by Tencent Cloud and Frost & Sullivan.