Shanghai’s Kepler Robotics skips the IPO queue and chooses a merger instead

Why Kelin picked Kepler The power and electricity track is the most certain, largest humanoid landing spot, and State Grid tenders are concentrated in the tens of billions of yuan, shifting competition toward scenario fit and scaled delivery. Kelin has spent years in the grid and energy system, holding national grid government-enterprise channels, industry access … Read more

The US just regulated Unitree’s new robots. The real test is elsewhere

Not a border ban Unitree secured CSRC approval for its listing on 2 July, but under the FCC rule its new US-bound products face fresh access questions. It flagged the US market risk in its updated prospectus on 31 July. The US was 18.39, 19.54 and 13.30 per cent of revenue in 2023, 2024 and … Read more

The dexterous-hand ‘shovel seller’: how Lingxin bets on everyone else’s robot gold rush

The bottleneck everyone argues about The hand is the most visible choke point of embodied intelligence. As early as 2018 OpenAI admitted that contact, friction and damping are hard to simulate accurately, and Musk has said the forearm and hand are harder to build than the rest of the robot combined. Every gain in degrees … Read more

Shenzhen collaborative-robot leader Dobot pushes for an A-share ChiNext listing

From Hong Kong back to Shenzhen Dobot listed in Hong Kong in December 2024, raising a net 681 million Hong Kong dollars for research into intelligent collaborative robots, production capacity and overseas channels. It later completed two H-share placements worth about 1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars, steering much of that into embodied-AI development. The return-to-A-share … Read more

The US robot ban: who is it really protecting?

The US has issued another ban, this time aimed at robots. On 29 July the Federal Communications Commission placed foreign-produced advanced mobile robots on a controlled list, effective immediately, with exceptions only for products granted conditional approval by the US Department of War. Two words matter: ‘foreign-produced’ and ‘advanced robot equipment’. The FCC defines the … Read more

Where did H1 2026’s 93.5bn yuan in embodied-AI capital go? Heads took 70%, Beijing and Shenzhen lead

The first-half 2026 funding numbers for embodied AI are genuinely startling. IT Juzi counts 93.47 billion yuan deployed, up fivefold year on year, across 322 rounds, a 137% increase. Include overseas via GG Robot and the figure is 132.5 billion, up 428%. Same trend: a tide of capital rushing in. Where the money went The … Read more

Behind embodied AI’s ranking frenzy: how ‘world number one’ became a manufactured commodity

The speed of ‘first’ now outruns the speed of robot iteration. A model can go from launch to chart-topper in a week, and the charts refresh faster than products ship. When ‘first’ multiplies, the industry slides into a collective confusion about ranking inflation, and a fair question: who is actually manufacturing these titles? A manufactured … Read more

AgiBot files for Hong Kong IPO as ex-Huawei chief Deng Taihua steers humanoid maker to a capital exit

AgiBot has confirmed it is launching a Hong Kong listing, and it chose its timing with intent: the filing landed on the same day the Hong Kong exchange’s revised listing rules took effect. For a three-year-old humanoid maker, the move marks the shift from building product to cashing out capital. From zero to one in … Read more

China’s industrial-robot champion Estun delivers over 10,000 units in a single quarter

The lead is durable. Estun first took the national crown in 2025 with a 10.6 per cent share and 25 per cent annual shipment growth, lifting local brands’ combined share above 56 per cent. It has now led domestic shipments for eight consecutive years and six consecutive quarters. The moat is vertical. While peers lean … Read more

Dobot, the world’s top collaborative-robot seller by volume, heads to China’s ChiNext

The path was paved by policy. A June 2025 directive let Greater Bay Area firms listed in Hong Kong list on the Shenzhen exchange. Dobot, which debuted on the HK bourse in December 2024, became the first H-to-A case from the region. Its ChiNext application was accepted just 17 days after a new reform paper … Read more