Translated from Sina Hong Kong
Exclusive Annual Report Analysis | March 30, 2025
Humanoid robotics pioneer Ubtech has released its 2024 financial results, showcasing a 23.7% revenue surge to $1.305 billion (13.05B yuan) amid accelerating adoption by major automakers. The Shenzhen-based company, now training robots in factories worldwide alongside Tesla and Figure AI, reported narrowing losses (-8.3%) and record R&D investment ($478M), signaling a pivotal moment for embodied intelligence commercialization.
Financial Highlights & Sector Growth
Ubtech’s 2024 performance reveals strategic wins across three key segments:
- Industrial Custom Robots: $140M revenue (+126.1%)
- Consumer Robots & Hardware: $477M (+88.1%)
- AI Education: $363M (+4.6%)
The company’s gross margin reached $374M (+12.4%), while its 36.6% R&D-to-revenue ratio underscores its focus on maintaining technological leadership. With 2,680 patents (57.87% inventions), Ubtech has added 500+ patents in 2024 alone.
Strategic Positioning in National Tech Agenda
2025 marks a watershed moment as China’s government work report explicitly prioritizes “embodied intelligence” and “smart robots.” Ubtech’s report positions its technology stack as critical infrastructure for developing what policymakers term “new productive forces”:
- Multimodal perception/AI large models
- Embodied decision-making intelligence
- L4 autonomous driving optimization
- Swarm intelligence coordination systems
CEO Zhou Jian emphasized: “Humanoid robots in smart manufacturing are now a global tech battleground. Our industrial models are training in more factories than any competitor—we’re racing Tesla and Figure AI to solve labor shortages and reshape manufacturing.”
Automaker Deployments Accelerate
Ubtech disclosed several landmark deployments:
- Dongfeng Liuzhou: 20-unit deployment (world’s first batch deployment in auto plants by mid-2025)
- JuRan Smart Home: 500-unit order (10,000-unit sales target)
- Educational “TiGong Walker”: Priced at $29,900—40% below market average
The company’s BrainNet swarm architecture and Humanoid Intelligent Hub (loH) now enable multi-robot coordination at Zeekr’s 5G smart factory—a global first for complex manufacturing tasks.
Wall Street’s “Next Tesla” Narrative
Morgan Stanley’s Humanoid Robot 100 report identifies Ubtech as the only Chinese firm among global leaders, with Citigroup drawing parallels to Tesla’s early growth phase (24-25x price-to-sales ratios). Nine major brokerages now cover the stock, citing its automaker partnerships and 126% industrial segment growth as validation of its commercialization roadmap.
