36Kr Research Institute | Research Report on the Development of the Embodied Intelligence Industry in 2026

Currently, driven by the resonance of policy guidance, technological breakthroughs, and market demand, China's embodied intelligence industry is entering a new stage of rapid development. Against this backdrop, the layout of the capital market has become increasingly active. Public data shows that in the first 11 months of 2025, the financing amount in the embodied intelligence industry reached 33.473 billion yuan, four times that of the same period in 2024. As of December 21, 2025, there were over 305 financing events throughout the year, with a total amount exceeding 38 billion yuan, and the number of participating investment institutions exceeded 600. The intensive influx of capital fully confirms the industry's development potential and market confidence. This confidence is rooted in the clear and urgent replacement needs that continuously emerge in social and economic development. As issues such as the intensification of population aging and the structural shortage of the labor force become more prominent, society has an increasingly urgent need for intelligent solutions that can replace manual labor, undertake high - risk tasks, and improve production line efficiency. Traditional automation equipment is limited by fixed scenarios and preset programs, making it difficult to adapt to dynamic and complex environments such as flexible manufacturing and human - machine collaboration, and the industrial upgrade faces a core bottleneck. To break through this limitation, embodied intelligence represented by humanoid robots is evolving at an accelerated pace, gradually forming a complete technical closed - loop of "perception - cognition - decision - execution" with high - order cognitive abilities, and gradually moving towards large - scale mass production to better meet the needs of diverse scenarios. Thus, the development mainline of the embodied intelligence industry has extended from technological research to ecological construction and commercial closed - loop, marking that the industry has officially entered a critical stage of value realization.

China's embodied intelligence industry has entered the global first echelon with comprehensive advantages

In terms of technological maturity, industrial chain completeness, and market expansion speed, China's embodied intelligence industry is already in the global first echelon. In terms of technology, taking humanoid robots as an example, leading domestic enterprises have completed the engineering verification from prototype development to large - scale mass production. In terms of industrial chain support, China is forming an independent and controllable ability covering key components, with obvious cost advantages and local support capabilities. The number of suppliers of China's key components (such as hand and leg actuators) is much larger than that in the United States. The supply - chain advantage enables the cost of the whole machine to be controlled at about 50% of similar overseas products. At the same time, the independent iteration of domestic large models further strengthens technological independence. These solid supports enable the industry to show a high degree of growth elasticity, driving the Chinese market to become one of the fastest - growing embodied intelligence markets in the world. According to the calculation of the 36Kr Research Institute, the market size of China's embodied intelligence has rapidly increased from 213.3 billion yuan in 2018 to 915 billion yuan in 2025, and is expected to exceed the one - trillion - yuan mark in 2026.

Humanoid robots are the main carriers of embodied intelligence and are entering a critical stage of large - scale production and commercial implementation

As one of the main carriers of embodied intelligence, the humanoid robot industry will enter a critical stage of large - scale production in 2026. The product price continues to decline, and a mass - production scale of hundreds of thousands of units is expected. Meanwhile, the pace of commercial implementation is also accelerating, and the industrial field has become a key step in commercial expansion. In addition to the continuous decline in hardware costs, the core breakthrough in the development of humanoid robots lies more in the evolution of the robot brain, especially whether the "world model" technology emphasized by Professor Fei - Fei Li can achieve a key breakthrough. In the future, humanoid robots need to use the world model to break through the spatial intelligence bottleneck to achieve a higher - dimensional environmental understanding and autonomous decision - making ability.

The application of embodied intelligence continues to penetrate into downstream scenarios such as the industrial, service, special, and transportation fields

In the industrial field, the core of its application has shifted from traditional automation to supporting flexible manufacturing and autonomous decision - making. By integrating high - precision perception and deep - learning technologies, it can effectively adapt to complex tasks with small batches and multiple varieties and is being implemented at an accelerated pace in scenarios such as automobile manufacturing and electronics and electrical engineering. In the service field, the application scenarios cover commerce, family, public services, and emotional companionship. The development shows three trends: precise segmentation of scenarios, anthropomorphic interaction experience, and lightweight and innovative product forms. In the special field, its application focuses on closed - loop operations in extreme environments, and the adaptation ability continues to increase. Key breakthroughs have been achieved in scenarios such as disaster relief, energy inspection, and high - risk maintenance. In the transportation field, the development focus is shifting from the automation of a single vehicle to system - level collaboration and three - dimensional ecological construction.

In the future, the embodied intelligence industry will present a multi - level market pattern, and market competition will also be upgraded to a comprehensive competition at the ecological level

Driven by the world model, data closed - loop, and collaboration mechanism, embodied intelligence will be transformed into general labor that can be deployed on a large scale. Its scenario implementation will be carried out step by step according to technological maturity and environmental complexity, forming a multi - level market space. Meanwhile, the competition in China's embodied intelligence market will also shift to a comprehensive competition at the ecological level in terms of technological foundation, profitability, and supply - chain system.

The key research questions in this report are as follows:

• What stage of development is China's embodied intelligence industry at globally? Where are its comprehensive competitiveness mainly reflected?
• What are the core driving forces behind the development of China's embodied intelligence industry?
• What key bottlenecks does the current embodied intelligence industry face in technological evolution and industrial chain construction?
• What is the progress of domestic substitution of core components in China's embodied intelligence industry? Where are its advantages and disadvantages respectively?
• As an important carrier of embodied intelligence, what stage of development is the humanoid robot industry currently at? What are the situations of its large - scale mass production and commercial implementation paths?
• How is the application of embodied intelligence penetrating into downstream scenarios such as the industrial, service, special, and transportation fields? What are the differences in the implementation logic and maturity of each scenario?
• How is the competition pattern in China's embodied intelligence market changing? What are some typical representative enterprises?
• How will the technological and product systems of embodied intelligence evolve in the future? What is the core support for it to become general labor?

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