A sector-wide surge
On 19 and 20 October 2026, the A-share humanoid-robot sector rose sharply again. As the sector’s clear leader, Unitree (688836.SH) jumped 16.15 per cent on the 19th and touched an intraday RMB 508.99, then extended gains on the 20th to an intraday RMB 549.44, with its market value passing RMB 220 billion and the price back above the RMB 500 mark.
This rally was not an isolated event. On the 20th the humanoid-robot concept board was uniformly green: Changying Precision hit a 20 per cent limit-up, Orbbec and Hanwei rose more than 15 per cent, and more than ten names including Zhejiang Rongtai and Ningbo Dongli limit-up, with sector main-fund net inflows above RMB 4.7 billion.
From a RMB 1,100 frenzy to a RMB 500 re-rating
From the 19 August listing-day spike toward RMB 1,100, to a near halving within a month, to the October climb back above RMB 500, Unitree’s chart is a prism for the market’s frenzy, rational pullback and value re-rating of the humanoid frontier.
What lit the fuse
On 15 October the State Administration for Market Regulation approved China’s first six national humanoid-robot standards, effective 1 April 2027, the direct spark for this round. The six standards include five technical-requirement series and a simulation-testing-platform specification, systematically covering body composition, system architecture, environmental perception and intelligent decision-making, and setting a unified architecture and test method.
The secretary general of the national robotics standardisation committee said the six standards follow a complete loop from cognition to action to verification, aiming to build a system covering design, manufacturing, testing and application. Notably, a Unitree founder is among the drafters of the technical requirements, underscoring the company’s say in the field.
Just four days later, on 19 October, nine departments issued an opinion on boosting technology-enabled commerce that explicitly promotes embodied intelligence in trade, home service and logistics. On the industrial side, China’s 2025 humanoid output was about 20,000 units, the 2026 first half already passed 40,000, and the full year is expected to top 100,000, more than 400 per cent growth year on year.
Global analysts raise targets
Morgan Stanley lifted its 2026 China shipment forecast from 28,000 to 50,000, sees 446,000 by 2030 and a 106 per cent 2025 to 2030 compound rate. Frost and Sullivan’s 2026 global report shows first-half global sales of 36,000 units, already above the 35,000 full-year 2025, with revenue of 540 million US dollars, and all top five by revenue are Chinese.
Tesla’s Optimus design is nearing finalisation and entering production, with leading customers already placing reducer volume orders. Nvidia’s GTC Berlin on 20 to 22 October put physical AI and humanoid ecosystems centre stage, and OpenAI has confirmed a humanoid push with a demo expected in 2027. China’s first-half global shipment share rose to 97 per cent.
The component and application map
Upstream core parts take more than 60 per cent of whole-machine cost and hold the highest barrier and the widest domestic-substitution space. Green Harmonic’s share of the harmonic-reducer market jumped from about 70 per cent in 2025 to 80 to 90 per cent, supplying Unitree, UBTECH and AgiBot. Double-circle’s RV reducer grew over 70 per cent in 2025 shipments. Tuopu and Sanhua, auto Tier-1s, became Optimus suppliers. Unitree shipped over 7,000 humanoids in the first half, a 31.1 per cent share, second only to AgiBot’s 9,700 and 43.1 per cent.
The sector’s scenes are shifting from backflips on stages to screwing, sorting and moving in real factories. Xiaomi, BYD, SAIC and FAW, nearly ten carmakers, are already validating embodied deployment on real lines. The performance of 2026, more than any slogan, is what underpins this rally.
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. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-10/ART-898890-12003-30707980.html.