China’s dexterous-hand ‘new four’ form a first tier

A year ago China’s dexterous-hand sector was a demo-dominated infancy. Capital interest was thin, most makers were still validating concepts, and industry shipments sat at the hundred-to-thousand-unit level, with products suited to trade-show displays rather than stable industrial use or full humanoid integration. In a single year the picture flipped. Hot money rushed in, new … Read more

Daimon-TWM: how tactile sensing entered the robot brain

Tactile sensing is becoming a foundational capability for the next generation of embodied intelligence. For two years the robotics industry poured resources into bodies, large models, dexterous hands and vision. As those capabilities advanced quickly, the bottleneck narrowed to the contact layer: a robot must not only locate an object, but feel force, friction, slip … Read more

ByteDance stops hiding on AI: Doubao takes a 12 per cent cut, bans distillation, bets on 5 trillion parameters

Doubao, ByteDance’s AI assistant, has started charging a commission. The same hotel room on the same settlement system costs an 8 per cent platform fee from the Douyin feed but 12 per cent when the order jumps from the Doubao chat box. The four-percentage-point gap has a single variable: the traffic came from an AI … Read more

Tianjin backs smart robots with 20 billion yuan core-output goal by 2028

On 12 August, Tianjin’s industry, development and science bureaus issued the Tianjin Smart Robot Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan for 2026 to 2028. By the end of 2028 the city targets core output above 20 billion yuan, average annual growth beyond 15 per cent and a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regional supply rate above 60 per cent. … Read more

Ruqi Robotaxi joins Tencent’s mobility service, widening the L4 commercialisation funnel

Shenzhen News reported on 12 August that Ruqi’s Robotaxi fleet capacity has been connected to Tencent’s Travel Service WeChat mini-program. In zones including Guangzhou’s Nansha and Science City, users can now hail a Ruqi Robotaxi through the Tencent entry point. Ruqi Robotaxi is now bookable inside Tencent’s Travel Service mini-program (Source: Shenzhen News) Inside a … Read more

Ex-DJI and Anker exec Liu Liyuan launches pet-companion robot with Yuanhe-led angel

LeiPhone has learned that Liu Liyuan, a former core product lead at DJI and Anker, has started a venture in pet-companion robots and closed an angel round led by Yuanhe. The move takes a seasoned Shenzhen hardware operator into one of consumer robotics’ most emotionally sticky niches. A pet-companion robot, the new bet from ex-DJI … Read more

AgiBot overtakes Unitree as China takes 97 per cent of global humanoid shipments

The first half of 2026 reshuffled the humanoid rankings. AgiBot shipped more than Unitree for the first time, taking the global lead. According to a 9 August report from Smart Analytics Global, a California research firm, global humanoid shipments reached about 19,100 units in the first half, nearly triple the 5,100 a year earlier. Full-year … Read more

Unitree’s 61 billion yuan tag: giants are buying a ticket to the physical world

Before Unitree had even started trading, the market had already priced its IPO at about 61 billion yuan. With 2025 revenue near 1.699 billion yuan and net profit around 278 million yuan, that implies a static price-to-earnings multiple of roughly 219 times. The natural first reaction: why would a maker of robot dogs and humanoids … Read more

GAC spin-out Huilun Robotics closes 100 million yuan round for humanoids

Guangdong Huilun Technology, the embodied-AI subsidiary GAC Group spun out to industrialise humanoids, has closed a 100 million yuan funding round. The capital will fund vertical-model optimisation, expansion into automotive production-line and service scenarios, core-product iteration, team building and the scaled rollout of humanoid whole machines and core components. Huilun Robotics’ GoMate Mini wheel-leg humanoid … Read more

ModelBest files for STAR Market listing as edge-LLM front-runner

Beijing ModelBest Technology has registered for IPO tutoring with China’s securities regulator, making it one of the first edge large-language-model developers to test a new STAR Market listing route for AI companies without scale revenue. The filing, dated 12 August 2026, names CITIC Securities as sponsor; the company completed its joint-stock reform on 5 August, … Read more