T800's design was inspired by Iron Man and Terminator. The name T800 refers to the robot portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger on Terminator. T800 is built to match an adult male; 173cm and 75kg. EngineAI HQ has great views; HK on one side of the skyline, Shenzhen on the other. You can see the design lineage clearly the helmeted, armored silhouettes read like a direct nod to Iron Man, with some rougher, more skeletal frames pulling from Terminator.

EngineAI is famous for its T800 boxing robot and URKL robot fight league Founder Zhao Tongyang previously founded & exited a quadruped company to Chinese car producer XPeng He then built XPeng's humanoid robotics program from scratch (XPeng Robotics announced a $900m raise last month) He quit XPeng and built EngineAI in 2023 focusing on bipedal humanoids, raised ~$400m since inception Series B in Apr 26 valued EngineAI at $1.4bn. Steep discount compared to Unitree ($31bn) and Ubtech ($5bn). The viral T800 robot model was launched only 10 months ago in Dec 25 EngineAI's URKL robot league was launched in Feb this year and takes place every month (took place last week in Shanghai) Thank you EngineAI team for hosting me at your HQ in Shenzhen!

Robot production factory managed autonomously by other robots 🤖 Ubtech set up a factory that builds a humanoid robot every 10 min and the assembly is done by their own robots Ubtech's stock is trading at ~$5bn mcap and raised a cumulative $1.3bn in 14 yrs Generated $88m revenue from humanoid sales in H1 26 Flagship robot Walker S2 already deployed on assembly lines of BYD, Geely and Airbus Wheeled robot Cruzr S2 deployed in Ubtech's own assembly lines Uworld U1 is the viral bionic robot series that already had >13k pre-orders Tien Kung came #2 in Robot Games this year and is a  JV product by Ubtech team Ubtech is widely considered among the top 3 Chinese robotics firms alongside Unitree and AgiBot Thank you Ubtech team for hosting me at your HQ in Shenzhen!

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Ubtech unveiled its bionic robots in June >13k units pre-ordered already Full body model costs $145k Use cases; home companionship, elderly care, retail receptionist and entertainment I had the chance to see these robots live both at WRC Beijing and at Ubtech's Shenzhen HQ

We will have multiple personalities embodied in robots. Told you the future is weird.

AgiBot is among the top 3 Chinese robotics firms alongside Unitree & Ubtech They have 44% of humanoid robot market share as of H1 26 with 8.4k shipped units Founder Peng Zhihui is an ex-Huawei gigabrain engineer and a KOL with 2.5m followers on Chinese YouTube AgiBot dominated Robot Games this year with most medals among all firms AgiBot's Mar 26 valuation was ~$2bn and they plan to do an IPO this year They're backed by top Asian firms such as Tencent, BYD, JD, LG, Baidu and Sequioa Xi Jinping visited AgiBot HQ last year Thank you AgiBot team for hosting me at your HQ!

Robots replacing founders?

How is robot training data generated? 🦾 Teleoperation: a human controls a real robot arm. Most accurate. Least scalable. 😎 Ego video: a human wears a headset & does tasks. Most scalable. Least accurate. 🤳 Headset + gripper/wrist cams: the middle ground. More accurate than pure video, more scalable than teleoperation. No expensive, dedicated robot needed, but you still get direct grip and position data. I tested out AgiBot's MEgo grippers at their HQ.

Imagine an app-store-style marketplace where you swap AI personas onto the same robot body. Playful one day. A therapist persona another day. A business partner the next day. AgiBot is building super realistic bionic humanoids similar to Ubtech and Noetix. What got my attention is the app marketplace they're building to allow users to swap AI personas within the same robot body.

I played tic-tac-toe with Fourier's GR3

Fourier's walking-rehab treadmill simulation is super fun! There are four scenarios in this demo: a subway car, a mountain ridge, a lakeside park, a misty forest path. Patients train their balance and gait against real-world environments with no fall risk. Obviously this is a relatively more premium product as you can probably achieve the same training without the curved screen as or simulation software as well.

This Softbank backed Chinese robotics company builds robots for rehabilitation. Unlike most other Chinese robotics firms founded in 2023, Fourier was founded in 2015. They built rehab robots and exoskeletons helping elderly, amputees, stroke survivors and orthopedic patients. They sell robots to 2000+ institutions (hospitals, clinics, universities) across 40+ countries. Clear use case with massive growth potential as people live longer & an older population = more patients for rehab.

Kepler got acquired in May 26 at an implied $106m valuation. Compared to Unitree ($29bn), Ubtech ($5bn), Galbot ($3bn) - $106m is a steep discount. Despite Kepler having partnerships with SAIC-GM and BMW where it actually deploys its robots. The giant motorbike was one of the hottest robots at WRC Beijing. Thank you Kepler Robotics team for having me at your HQ in Shanghai!

This Chinese robot is designed to mimic Tesla's Optimus form factor It can lift 30kg, has 8hr battery life and can walk rough terrain High endurance robot designed to work on industrial environments and is already deployed in BMW China's assembly line The robot costs roughly $85k

Chinese robotics firm GigaAI is valued at $3bn Unlike hardware focused firms like Unitree, GigaAI focuses on intelligence A better analogy would be to consider it as the Chinese counterparties of US startups Generalist or Physical Int They are one of the top 3 Chinese robotics firms that focus on intelligence alongside Spirit AI and X Square Giga AI cumulatively raised >$600m since 2023 and its founder previously led AI at a large autonomous driving firm They are training world-models and VLA models Human videos are a majority source of their training data alongside simulation data Given their expertise in model training & simulations, they can generate simulation data at a fraction of human video data Thank you GigaAI team for having me in your HQ in Beijing!

I tried teleoperating a humanoid robot arm through an exoskeleton controller. 🌰 big walnut - grabbed in a few seconds 🌰 small walnut - couldn't do it for 10 min Controlling a robot hand through an exoskeleton is harder than it looks. Your hand can do something perfectly and the robot still won't. Haptic feedback matters here as your own hand corrects small slips through touch, automatically, without you thinking about it. An exoskeleton controller only shows you what the robot's hand is doing, not what it's feeling, so that automatic correction never kicks in.

Piano is a hard manipulation test for robots. Independent finger control, precise timing, and pressure sensitivity, all at once. One of the demo in Linkerbot's showroom was two robots playing piano simultaneously. Ofc one can question the necessity given how expensive these robots are when one can hire a human musician But there is sth compelling watching robots perform live music and I do believe it will have its demand in the future

Linkerbot is the leading dexterous robot hand producer valued at $3bn. They own ~80% of market share globally according to their CEO. Clients include industrial firms such as Samsung, Siemens & research institutions such as MIT, Stanford, Cambridge. Raised $230m cumulatively since 2023 backed by top Chinese funds such as Ant Group, Sequoia China, Fosun Capital

Temu Ronaldo 🇵🇹   vs  Temu Messi 🇦🇷