Roughly 90% of humanoid robots worldwide are produced in China. Around 20,000 units were shipped worldwide last year. Almost all of them were manufactured in China. By 2030, Bank of America predicts that figure will rise to 1.2 million yearly shipments worldwide. This becomes a supply chain and geopolitical story rather than a technology story if that prediction comes true and the majority of those machines continue to be manufactured in China. The similarities between solar panels and electric cars are difficult to ignore. Beijing used subsidies to start those industries, quickly increased capacity, reduced costs through fierce domestic competition,…
Author: Lei Chuang
Lei Chuang
Lei Chuang is a technology journalist and robotics correspondent with over eight years of experience covering artificial intelligence, automation, and emerging tech. Based in California, Lei has closely followed the global humanoid robot industry since its earliest commercial milestones, reporting on companies such as Tesla, Figure AI, Boston Dynamics, and Unitree. His writing cuts through the noise of industry hype to deliver grounded, accurate reporting that both engineers and everyday readers can trust. Before joining HumanoidRobotsEra.com, Lei contributed to several Asia-Pacific technology publications, covering robotics policy, AI research, and industrial automation across US, China, Japan, and South Korea. He believes the humanoid robot era is the defining technological story of this generation.
For decades, Universal Basic Income has been anticipated. It appears to have come at some point in the last eighteen months, quietly and without the publicity the concept most likely deserved. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, who is not known for idle speculation, told The Atlantic in May 2026 that he no longer thought mass unemployment from AI could be prevented and that the solution was “universal high income.” It wasn’t a hypothetical statement he made. He described it as something he anticipates. The tech industry’s previous stance, which tended toward promises that new jobs would replace the old…
A humanoid robot finished the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds on the first day of the 2026 World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. For more than fifteen years, Usain Bolt held the record, which was set in Berlin in 2009 and was regarded by many as unbeatable. On a Saturday morning, in front of hundreds of people who had mostly gathered to watch robots fall over, the machine erased it in a speed skating venue that had been converted. A few did fall. One caught fire. However, one also ran faster than any human has ever done. Before discussing spreadsheets,…
A video of a humanoid machine moving through a BMW factory in South Carolina and picking up sheet metal components with the kind of casual precision that makes you double-check what you’re watching has been making the rounds in robotics circles. No dramatic tunes. There is no voiceover. Just a robot performing a task that, until recently, required years of training and two human hands. The clip is brief. In a subtle way, it’s also among the more important things you can watch at the moment. The robot from Figure AI finished a multi-month deployment at that plant, helping to…