The Belt

A CMU-linked startup is building the Android moment for humanoid robots with a USD 1,500 open hardware kit

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In 2026 the humanoid-robot race entered an odd paradox. Hardware is racing: full-size humanoids now backflip and street-dance, with Unitree’s G1 on the OmniXtreme framework hitting a 96.36 per cent backflip success rate and sub-10-millisecond end-to-end latency, numbers unimaginable three years ago. A humanoid robot demonstration at a 2026 event. (Source: Leiphone) But the ecosystem’s … Read more

LinkerBot pulls together a 20-company Tier 1 alliance to standardise China’s embodied-robotics stack

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On 2 September, initiated by LinkerBot and Xingyuanzhi, more than 20 core supply-chain firms including Orbbec, FAORobot, Fulai New Materials, Hesai, Huaweike, Livox, Langyi, Linghou, Rokae, Mailivision, Nuwa Create, Quanzhibo, Senyun, RoboSense, Tashan, Wuwenzhike, the iFlytek robot-brain platform, Xinjingcheng, Quectel, Zhixing Embodied and Zongguanxian formed the China Embodied Intelligence Tier 1 Industry Alliance. LinkerBot’s dexterous-hand … Read more

A 2-billion-parameter model just beat 8-billion ones at robot-arm control by doing less, not more

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For a while, Scaling Law ruled embodied intelligence. To make a robot arm handle complex pick, align and assemble tasks, most work pushed vision-language-action (VLA) models to 7 billion or even 8.5 billion parameters. Bigger helped semantics, but long-horizon instability did not disappear. A robot arm executing a long-horizon manipulation task. (Source: Leiphone) Many large … Read more

Embodied AI’s hardest 20 per cent is where the cloud finally earns its place

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This year’s WAIC and WRC showed a shift in embodied intelligence: less showboating, more pragmatism. Last year’s robots danced, fought and walked runways; this year they were dropped into real logistics, industrial and home tasks. That points to a bigger question: how far has embodied intelligence actually come, and how far to real scale? Embodied-intelligence … Read more

Tianqi breaks ground on a RMB 1 billion embodied-robotics base aimed at car manufacturing

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Gasgoo Embodied Intelligence learned that Tianqi’s embodied-intelligence robot industry project has recently broken ground. Sited in the core area of Wuxi Huishan High-Tech Zone, it carries total investment above RMB 1 billion and covers more than 70 mu, about 47,000 square metres. The project fuses automotive smart manufacturing with embodied intelligence, building an automotive-equipment smart-manufacturing … Read more

Simple AI closes another nine-figure round as its bodyless data engine moves from hotels toward the home

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On 4 September Simple AI announced a several-hundred-million-yuan Pre-A+ round, with investors including Kexi Capital, the intellectual-property fund under Shanghai Science and Technology, Jinpu Investment, Bozhou Industrial Investment, Shangcheng Capital, Qianrong Capital and returning shareholder Linear Capital. Simple AI’s service robot operating in a hotel setting. (Source: OFweek) Beijing Simple AI was founded in 2024 … Read more

Six years after walking away, OpenAI is back building robots, and this time it starts with the world model

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On 1 June 2026 Sam Altman posted on X: AI should help humans in the physical world; in the short term OpenAI is building robots that assist skilled workers constructing future infrastructure, and in the long term it imagines a personal robot for everyone. The post announced OpenAI Robotics, closing a six-year loop from disbanding … Read more

Noetix Robotics unveils Scalabot, its bet that the Scaling Law will rule physical-world robots

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On 8 September Noetix Robotics formally launched Scalabot, a general embodied-intelligence technology brand, together with HERON-World Model, the first world model under its HERON architecture. The move extends the company beyond robot bodies into full-stack capability that pairs body with embodied brain. Noetix Robotics unveils its Scalabot embodied-intelligence brand. (Source: Gasgoo) Scalabot fuses Scale and … Read more

Tesla China cuts prices again, and buyers who took delivery weeks ago are fuming

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On 7 September Tesla China abruptly announced price cuts through a limited-time purchase incentive, and a wave of owners who had only just taken delivery found themselves thousands of yuan underwater. Under the policy, valid for orders placed and delivered by 30 September, the entire Model 3 lineup of in-stock cars carries a RMB 5,000 … Read more

AUMOVIO, spun off from Continental, is rewriting its China rulebook around speed

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China’s smart-car industry is still accelerating. The pace shows up not just in shorter launch cycles but across how consumers adopt new technology, how products are developed, how supply chains cut cost and how companies make decisions. For automotive suppliers, the rules of competition are shifting: products must land faster and cheaper while still meeting … Read more