September’s defining events
The month opened at IFA 2026 in Berlin. Unitree demonstrated fully autonomous humanoid boxing with its UnifoLM world model and released the upgraded G1+ at RMB 95,000 including tax. MagicLab showed three new robots and its Magic-VLA model. Dobot exhibited collaborative arms and a panda quadruped, with global deployments past 100,000 arms across more than 80 Fortune 500 clients. Deep Robotics displayed its quadruped inspection suite already running at Singapore Power and Ningxia wind farms. LimX brought the T800 humanoid with 450-newton-metre peak joint torque performing martial-arts moves.
Stateside, Universal Robots released its Gen7 platform at IMTS Chicago with a CB7 controller 40 per cent more powerful and 30 per cent smaller, plus three new g-series collaborative arms. Agility Robotics launched Digit 5 with 20 per cent more payload and 30 per cent longer continuous runtime, its fleet past 70,000 real-world hours at Amazon, Toyota and GXO, with commercial release set for late 2027. Figure AI released Helix 2.5, able to act zero-shot in unseen homes, and deepened Figure 03’s deployment at BMW’s Spartanburg plant.
Chinese names landing, not just showing
Domestically, Qiyuan Robot launched the Q1 consumer humanoid and T1 wheeled service robot at RMB 19,999 each, with authorised experience stores in seven cities. Delta-0 released its native humanoid base model completing 32 planned steps in 210 seconds. Nvidia launched its Open Agent Safety Platform and added more than ten whole-robot ecosystem partners to Isaac GR00T. LimX and Kyland released the first fully domestically architected humanoid with a home-grown electronic stack.
Benmo Dynamics listed on the Hong Kong exchange on 29 September at HKD 21.60, opening at HKD 22.48, a 4.1 per cent premium, with first-day value above HKD 6 billion. Founded in 2020 around direct-drive technology, it leads China’s consumer-robot direct-drive module segment with a 61.1 per cent share. UBTech’s Zigong line ramped ahead of plan, its Liuzhou ten-thousand-unit factory opened, and industrial-humanoid clients now include GAC and BYD.
The funding tape
PaXini closed a several-hundred-million-renminbi B-plus, cumulative financing past RMB 4 billion, one month after an RMB 1 billion strategic round. D-Robotics, a Horizon spin-out, took a USD 400 million Series C to build its Sunrise chip and full-stack software platform, with cumulative chip shipments past 8 million units. Songying, Zhinuo and Fangqi closed early rounds. Cognibotics took EU EIC funding for its HKM1800 logistics platform doing more than 2,000 picks an hour. Neura’s C round reached up to USD 1.4 billion. TEKEVER closed a USD 580 million D round at a USD 6.4 billion valuation, entering embodied robotics from drones. First Hydrogen bought a humanoid subsidiary for energy sites.
Orders and deliveries
Star Era’s logistics quadruped passed 15 sites at 2,100 picks an hour, at 85 per cent of manual speed, with SF Express and China Post. Zhishen’s SP1 explosion-proof quadruped won fire-brigade and Baosteel orders. UBTECH’s Zigong line ramped with GAC and BYD as clients. AgiBot’s Serbia plant entered ramp at up to 20,000 units a year, with its G2 hitting 99.99 per cent success at Longcheer’s tablet line. Leju landed Midea’s Hefei line. Zhixiang’s Moz1 entered Wanda and CR Land malls. Jiangxing’s inspection robots passed 1,800 industrial sites with State Grid and Sinopec orders.
More from the original report
The September report also covered the six major Japanese industrial-robot makers at IMTS, Toyota’s tie-up with Japanese carmakers on humanoid R&D, Korean players Hyundai, Doosan, LG accelerating with Nvidia’s Isaac platform, and European names Theker, Motion, Vesoma and Cognibotics pushing into factories. SKILD deployed its physical-AI model with Nvidia and Foxconn for Blackwell chip assembly. Chery’s Moji robot prepared an IPO with overseas orders across 35 countries.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robotics report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.