The 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing’s Yizhuang district filled nearly 50,000 square metres with more than 300 robotics firms and over 3,000 exhibits. Jessica Huang, daughter of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, was among the visitors walking the booths.
Behind the crowd, the mood shifted. Flashy backflips and dance routines gave way to robots doing actual work: Star Era replicated a logistics sorting line, RealMan ran a 24-hour pharmacy, Galbot demoed home and retail tasks. The question on the floor moved from “what can it do” to “what task can it finish.”
The scale is real. Zhang Feng of the China Humanoid and Embodied Intelligence Council said China shipped more than 40,000 humanoids in the first half of 2026, about 97 per cent of the global total. AgiBot and Unitree lead with over 43 per cent and 31 per cent of shipments; the top five account for 86.5 per cent.
But a Morgan Stanley note warns that over 65 per cent of units are still in demonstration or testing, with under 35 per cent in real deployment. Consensus among founders: this is a technology inflection, not yet a commercial one. Unitree’s Wang Xingxing sees a robotics “ChatGPT moment” in two to three years at best, five to ten at worst.
Investors have sobered up. About 92 per cent of sector funding now flows to leaders with orders, scalable output and full-stack capability. The race is no longer single tricks. It is the whole loop: data, training, hardware and deployment.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Sohu report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.