Unitree ramps up push for AI breakthroughs

Chinese robotics firm Unitree Robotics is stepping up work on manufacturing, AI models and computing infrastructure, with its founder Wang Xingxing predicting an industry breakthrough within one to three years in robots' ability to perform real-world tasks.

"Almost everyone in the world still underestimates AI, myself included," Wang said at a partner ecosystem summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Thursday. Wang outlined the company's three development priorities: strengthening large-scale manufacturing; developing AI models tailored to Unitree's hardware, both in-house and with partners; and building large-scale computing clusters.

On Friday, Unitree Robotics, billed as China's first listed embodied AI company, extended its recent rally, jumping as much as 20 percent to 624 yuan ($93) per share. The company had previously faced controversy as its shares slid from a debut peak of 1,100 yuan to 404 yuan. Since last Friday, however, the stock has rebounded by about 48 percent.

Wang sees potential demand eventually reaching tens or even hundreds of millions of robots. Data, computing power, chip production capacity, energy and minerals would become key resources shaping future competition, he said.

Unitree has produced about 10,000 to 20,000 G1 humanoid robots since the model's launch in May 2024, Wang said. He expects commercial services to adopt robots faster than households or industrial users.

The expansion plans reflect Wang's growing confidence in "physical AI" — intelligence that allows machines to understand their surroundings and act in the real world.

Wang pointed to internal tests in which a general-purpose AI model controlled a robot painting a picture. The machine changed colors and cleaned its brush without the team writing programs specifically for those actions, he said.

Such results suggest that AI models can already handle some aspects of task planning, Wang said. He expects advances in those models to help the robotics industry achieve a breakthrough within one to three years.

His benchmark for a "ChatGPT moment" in embodied intelligence is a robot that can follow spoken or written instructions to complete roughly 80 percent of tasks in 80 percent of unfamiliar environments.

To accelerate progress, Unitree is developing a system that would let AI participate in improving robot capabilities.

At the conference, it launched a program aiming to incubate more than 200 partner companies over five years. It also announced an annual physical AI competition open to teams and individuals worldwide, offering tens of millions of yuan in prizes across areas including dexterous manipulation, production and care services.

Wang said "developers in China and overseas were already building algorithms and open-source frameworks on Unitree's hardware, allowing others to improve on their work".

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country produced more than 40,000 humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, with full-year output expected to exceed 100,000.

Wang Tianmiao, a robotics professor at Beihang University, said: "China's robotics industry has risen rapidly thanks to a combination of market demand, talent, supply chains and data."

He pointed to China's supply networks for motors, sensors and manufacturing equipment, alongside engineers skilled in integrating software and hardware, as important foundations for growth. But widespread household adoption would take longer, he said, because robots must meet demanding requirements for safety, cost, maintenance and the ability to perform varied tasks.