In 2026, embodied robots fight for "working hours".

If we were to find a keyword for the embodied intelligent robots in 2025, "evolution" would be more fitting than any technical term.

From stunning the public with their "yangge dance" on the Spring Festival Gala stage in the Year of the Snake, to being ridiculed by netizens for "faking a fall" on the marathon track, and then to the T800 kicking the founder of Zhongqing away and the Xiaopeng IRON being questioned by the whole network as being a real person in disguise.

This evolution does not merely refer to more flexible joints and faster algorithms, but a more profound transformation of identity: from being a technological wonder under scrutiny to becoming a production factor under assessment.

Under the spotlight and magnifying glass, robots are starting to step out of the laboratory, learning awkwardly yet firmly how to coexist with the human world. Their blunders and jokes, along with every precise grasp they complete and every kilometer they walk, together form the complex footnote of this "coming - of - age ceremony."

While people were still watching these "new species" on social media, embodied robots had already entered real life to find their "workstations" — in automobile manufacturing workshops, industrial robots have transformed from automated production tools into "colleagues" on the production line who can understand human language; on concert stages, humanoid robots with synchronized movements are gradually becoming reliable "dance partners"; in the rental market, the "daily wage" of robots has quietly dropped from tens of thousands of yuan to a more practical range of several hundred to a thousand yuan.

Looking back at the trajectory of this "coming - of - age ceremony," the industry has been pushed from the initial "technological show - off" to a new stage of "value delivery."

In 2025, recognized as the first year of mass production of embodied intelligence, leading players in the field have won large - scale mass - production orders, truly announcing that the industry is about to enter an era of competing in robot "working hours." When the "consensus on mass production" meets the "working - hour standard," a "value delivery race" around the commercialization of embodied intelligence has also begun.

Evolution: "Clumsy at the beginning of the year, doing backflips at the end"

Not long ago, the topic of robot dance accompaniment at Wang Leehom's Chengdu concert hit the hot search, attracting the attention of the whole network. In the performance video, six humanoid robots in silver cloaks performed a hardcore version of "Full Throttle" with Wang Leehom. The robots not only highly synchronized their movements with human dancers but also showed off difficult front flips during the climax of the song.

After the video went viral, netizens flooded the screen with "unbelievable" and "Is this still the robot I know?" Even the "tech madman" Elon Musk couldn't help but repost the relevant video and commented with "Impressive."

Many people's impression of robot dance accompaniment still remains on the Spring Festival Gala stage in the Year of the Snake. At that time, these robots were wearing cotton - padded jackets, dancing the yangge and twirling handkerchiefs stiffly, and even needed to be carried off the stage by the back of their necks after the performance. But by the end of the year, they had become so flexible that there was no sense of incongruity when cooperating with dancers, making people sigh at their rapid growth.

Looking back at the year 2025 of embodied robots, it can be regarded as a condensed and accelerated version of the industry's evolution history. Before that, most embodied robot products were still in the first - generation prototype stage in the laboratory or only existed in carefully edited videos. But in 2025, with the appearance of Unitree robots on the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Snake, more and more humanoid robots began to step out of the "ivory tower" of the laboratory to explore the limits of robot movement ability.

Compared with traditional embodied robots, the most significant core of the evolution of humanoid robots lies in the improvement of their intelligence level — by embedding a large - model "brain," humanoid robots have gained "environmental perception ability" and "instruction understanding ability," thereby improving motion algorithms and balance control and making their movements more smooth and natural.

In fact, until the first half of 2025, humanoid robots were still ridiculed by netizens for various "fancy falls," but the rapid iteration of technology soon led the industry into the second half of intensive "show - off":

At the 2025 World Robot Conference, domestic humanoid robots achieved high - difficulty actions such as 360 - degree rotation and dynamic running for the first time; at the 2025 Humanoid Robot Sports Meeting, more than 500 robots from around the world comprehensively demonstrated their cutting - edge achievements in fields such as intelligent decision - making and motion cooperation; the Zhiyuan Robot Expedition A2 completed a hundred - kilometer cross - city walk, verifying its perception and motion control ability on complex road conditions; the Zhongqing T800 kicked its own CEO away, making the industry and the public re - examine the robot's movement ability.

These "show - off" moments not only attracted the world's attention but also brought initial attention and capital to the industry. However, there is a natural bottleneck in this "show - off" narrative: every time after the exclamation, the market will always calmly ask, then what?

Entering the real world: The balance between cost and value tilts

In the second half of 2025, the embodied intelligence industry spontaneously and collectively answered this question with actual orders. Leading manufacturers began to deliver products intensively and successively signed orders worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan.

According to incomplete statistics from public information, UBTECH's industrial humanoid robots received nearly 1.4 billion yuan in orders in 2025; Unitree Technology accumulated nearly 1.2 billion yuan in orders in 2025; Yuejiang Robotics' order amount in 2025 was about 1.1 billion yuan; Zhiyuan Robotics' sales in 2025 exceeded 1 billion yuan. In addition, the annual cumulative amounts of many leading players in the industry, such as Xingdong Jiyuan, Leju, and Zhipingfang, have exceeded or are close to the standard of 500 million yuan.

Since the second half of 2025, the main path of the technological evolution of embodied robots has shifted from simple "show - off" to "value delivery" in large - scale applications. The expansion of application scenarios has become the most intuitive manifestation of this "coming - of - age ceremony."

In addition to common commercial performance and scientific research and teaching scenarios, large - scale orders from enterprises often flow to scenarios such as factory manufacturing and warehousing and logistics. In the field of industrial manufacturing, humanoid robots have been deeply integrated into scenarios such as automobile manufacturing, 3C electronics, and power production with their high - precision perception and dexterous operation abilities. The industry's focus has shifted from "can the robot do a backflip" to "can it work for 8 hours?"

The strict requirements of the industrial environment for the stability, reliability, and accuracy of robots have forced robots to continuously upgrade in terms of joint stability, overall structure reliability, battery life, and software system adaptability. The engineering implementation of the multi - modal large model (VLA) has ended the history of industrial robots being "congenitally deaf and dumb" and "needing human accompaniment."

On the automobile assembly line, robots can already "understand" the oral instructions of technicians to pick up specific tools or parts. In terms of continuous operation ability, humanoid robots can autonomously replace batteries without human intervention, further reducing the labor maintenance cost of factories.

Thanks to the unique industrial dividends of China's supply chain, the cost of the supply chain of the embodied intelligence industry and the price of product services have been continuously decreasing. According to Morgan Stanley, in 2025, the cost of non - Chinese supply chains was about 130,000 US dollars, equivalent to the annual salary of an ordinary American worker for 2 years. But the bill of materials (BOM) cost of manufacturing a humanoid robot using the Chinese supply chain was only about 46,000 US dollars.

In the domestic C - end market of embodied robots, with the breakthrough in the localization rate of some core components such as harmonic reducers and six - axis force sensors, the single - unit BOM (bill of materials) cost has dropped significantly. The unit price of humanoid robots has dropped from hundreds of thousands of yuan to less than 100,000 yuan, and has even entered the "ten - thousand - yuan era."

The once - booming robot rental market at the end of the year has also seen its daily rent drop from tens of thousands of yuan to several hundred to a thousand yuan. The starting rental price of some basic - class embodied robots has dropped to as low as 200 yuan per day.

On the value side, the "working - hour efficiency" of robots is being rediscovered and carefully calculated by manufacturing enterprises. According to the research of Caixin Securities, assuming that the work efficiency of humanoid robots is 60% of that of traditional human labor, the current hourly wage of humanoid robots entering the manufacturing industry is 19.98 - 49.94 yuan per hour, while that of traditional human labor is 38.31 - 57.47 yuan per hour. Humanoid robots already have a theoretical advantage.

When the comprehensive economic value created by robots clearly exceeds their full - life - cycle usage cost in mainstream application scenarios, the direct result of this tilt of the balance is the explosion of large - scale orders, and the industry is about to take a new step towards large - scale mass production and delivery.

"Gunshot": The financing competition and the order battle

Recently, Zhishen Technology, a full - industry - chain technology service provider for embodied intelligence, announced that it had completed multiple rounds of financing in succession, with a cumulative amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. This became the first large - scale financing in the field in 2026, firing the first shot in the capital enthusiasm of this field.

This enthusiasm has spread from last year to now. According to incomplete statistics from the China Robot Network, in 2025, there were about 200 investment and financing events in the Chinese robot industry, with the total amount estimated to exceed 40 billion yuan. Among them, the three core tracks of humanoid robots, embodied intelligence, and core components dominated and became the focus of capital pursuit.

Just last month, Galaxy General Robotics announced that it had completed a new round of financing exceeding 300 million US dollars, winning the largest single - round financing in the embodied intelligence track in 2025. After this round of financing, its valuation soared to 3 billion US dollars, ranking first in the industry.

In the capital market in 2025, sufficient resources were reserved for the upcoming industrial competition in embodied intelligence, and it also revealed the trend of increasingly concentrated capital in the primary market. According to Touzhongwang, the top 10 companies in the embodied intelligence track took about 40% of the total annual financing amount.

Capital is using the most direct way to vote and select enterprises that can truly survive the cycle and achieve a positive business cycle. At present, whoever can get orders first will win the favor of capital, and more players in the track are using clear mass - production schedules to get their entry tickets.

Not long ago, Zhiyuan announced that the 5000th general - purpose embodied robot Lingxi X2 had officially rolled off the production line. Its CEO, Deng Taihua, publicly stated that the robot's shipment volume is expected to increase several times in 2026; UBTECH's Walker S2 started mass production and delivery in November last year, with an expected annual delivery of more than 500 units, and the expected annual production capacity will increase to 10,000 units in 2026; Unitree Technology's annual shipment volume last year was expected to exceed 4800 units, and its first global offline store was recently opened in Beijing.

As the order battle begins, there are also undercurrents in the secondary market. Leading players in the track represented by Unitree Technology have successively started the process of sprinting for IPO, and some players such as Zhiyuan Robotics have chosen to "go public indirectly" through mergers and acquisitions.

However, many leading embodied intelligence enterprises sprinting for IPO are already prepared for a loss - making listing. Even UBTECH, the "pioneer" that has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, lost more than 400 million yuan in the first half of 2025.

2026 is a year when the embodied intelligence track will see large - scale mass production and delivery, which will undoubtedly put more pressure on enterprises' delivery ability and self - financing ability. The "gunshot" at the beginning of the mass - production year is both a starting signal and the prelude to an elimination race. The cruelty and certainty of this industrial wave triggered by the tilt of the "cost - value balance" are equally obvious.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Shuke She" (ID: sktxs0), author: Beiye, published by 36Kr with authorization.