After the Spring Festival Gala, robots are busy taking on jobs outside their regular work.
On March 2nd, Songyan Dynamics and Galaxy Universal, two humanoid robot companies that appeared on the stage of the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Horse, announced the completion of a new round of financing on the same day.
Songyan Dynamics, which performed a sketch with Cai Ming on the Spring Festival Gala stage, completed a Series B financing of nearly 1 billion yuan, led by Chendao Capital, an industrial investment platform under CATL. Galaxy Universal, which danced with Yan Chengxu and Wang Yibo, completed a new round of financing of 2.5 billion yuan. The investors include the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Fund (the third phase of the National Big Fund), Sinopec, etc. Its cumulative financing amount ranks first in the domestic embodied intelligence field. Meanwhile, with a valuation of 3 billion US dollars, it has become the domestic embodied intelligence company with the highest valuation.
Source: Screenshot from Weibo
On the same day when the two companies completed their financing, Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, announced that his company's robots had started factory internships. In addition, Honor's first humanoid robot was officially unveiled at MWC on March 1st, marking Honor's official entry into the field of embodied intelligence.
With giants entering the market one after another and capital flocking in, the popularity of the embodied intelligence industry has been rising continuously since 2025. After the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Horse, not only has the enthusiasm of more capital been ignited, but the enthusiasm of the mass consumer market has also begun to explode. Robots are moving from the stage to commercial performances, exhibitions, and even family gatherings. "Renting a robot to add prestige" is changing from a "novelty" to an "everyday occurrence" in life.
01. Will the Spring Festival Gala Give Birth to a Market Worth Billions?
After the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Horse, the embodied intelligence industry remains hot. In addition to Galaxy Universal and Songyan Dynamics, recently, companies such as Zhipingfang, Youliqi Robot, and Qianxun Intelligence have all secured a new round of high - value financing. Since the beginning of 2026, a preliminary statistics shows that the total financing amount in the humanoid robot industry (including components) has approached 15 billion yuan.
The capital wave in the embodied intelligence track has also accelerated its spread to the consumer market. The Spring Festival Gala has allowed many people to witness the agility and fun of robots, and has also activated the public's enthusiasm for experience. Facing the high price tags of hundreds of thousands of yuan, "leasing" has become the best way for ordinary consumers and small and medium - sized enterprises to experience robots at a low cost.
Data from the robot leasing platform "Qingtian Rent" shows that during the Spring Festival this year (from the first day to the seventh day of the first lunar month), the platform's orders increased by nearly 70% compared with the previous period. Among them, entertainment performances accounted for 34%, commercial marketing accounted for 31%, educational and cultural tourism functions accounted for 19%, and life events and emotional consumption accounted for 16%.
More than one robot leasing merchant said that since the eve of the Spring Festival, the consultation and reservation calls for renting robots have been ringing non - stop. Around the Lantern Festival, the equipment was in short supply. Many customers were asking if the martial arts performance from the Spring Festival Gala could be brought to their annual meetings or commercial performance sites.
The WeChat official account "Fun Interpretation of Business" noticed that in addition to the demand for cultural tourism and performances, many individuals or families are also renting robots to experience the coexistence of humans and machines in daily life. There are many netizens on social media sharing Vlogs about "spending a day with a robot".
Source: Screenshot from Xiaohongshu
The soaring rental demand has pushed up the robot leasing market. In 2025, more than 1,500 robot leasing companies were established nationwide, a year - on - year increase of 48.1%. Recently, some leading financial leasing companies have also started to layout the robot leasing business, and vertical robot leasing platforms have emerged in the market.
Among the major leasing platforms, the more eye - catching ones are "Qingtian Rent" under ZHIYUAN ROBOT and "Wanjiyi Rent". The two platforms were established in December 2025 and January 2026 respectively. Both are "Didi - style" sharing economy platforms and have received angel and seed - round financing.
The shareholders of Wanjiyi Rent include Zhuo Xu, the chairman of Dematic Technology (688360.SH), Zhang Wenju, the founder of Darnor (833189.NQ), Tong Weiliang, the founding partner of Wutongshu Capital, Zheng Zhaolun, the founder of Hongrui Capital, and Fan Youxian, a partner of Eagle Fund.
The controlling shareholders of Qingtian Rent are ZHIYUAN ROBOT (55%) and Feikuo Technology (15%). Feikuo Technology is a back - end service provider for robot technology, founded by Li Yiyan, who is also the CEO and business leader of Qingtian Rent.
Li Yiyan recently publicly stated that at the beginning of its establishment, Qingtian Rent aimed to be like "Didi", serving both B - end and C - end customers. In Li Yiyan's view, small daily - life scenarios will gradually increase with the popularization of robots.
It is worth mentioning that during the Spring Festival, Qingtian Rent launched a national urban partner strategy, started recruiting national urban partners, and officially announced that it will hold the first national urban partner strategy press conference in Shanghai in March. Recently, Qingtian Rent released data showing that the number of applicants for its national urban partner strategy has exceeded 16,000, far exceeding the platform's expectations.
Source: Screenshot from Weibo
Some potential cooperative users said that they recently received a preliminary qualification screening call from Qingtian Rent. Through the call, they learned that Qingtian Rent's cooperation model is "1 + 3", that is, a one - year cooperation contract is signed, and payments are made on a quarterly basis every three months. It is best for partners to have supplier resources in exhibitions, event planning, weddings, etc., or resources in spaces such as large shopping malls and scenic spots. The investment funds can be divided into three levels: less than 200,000 yuan, 200,000 - 500,000 yuan, and more than 500,000 yuan. It is best to have relevant work experience and a team.
Recently, Magic Atom, an embodied intelligence technology company that also appeared on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Horse, also announced the construction of a leasing ecosystem and sent an invitation to leasing merchants nationwide.
Although people's demand for robots is increasing, with more and more merchants entering the leasing market, the rental price of robots has not risen as it did last year.
Looking through the product prices on Qingtian Rent and Wanjiyi Rent, most of them are in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, less than one - third of the price after last year's Spring Festival. On Qingtian Rent, the daily rental price of a Unitree G1 robot in Beijing is 4,599 yuan, while after last year's Spring Festival, the daily rental price of the Unitree G1 once exceeded 20,000 yuan, and it was still around 15,000 yuan in April and May.
Source: Screenshot from Qingtian Rent
Yu Yiran, the managing director of CIC Consulting, told the media that the "increase in quantity and decrease in price" of robot leasing is essentially the result of the current market supply and demand. The market is entering a more civilian - oriented cultivation period. Platformization will promote the market competition to gradually upgrade from "equipment supply competition" to "comprehensive service and delivery ability competition", which is conducive to the more standardized and sustainable development of the industry.
Jiang Qingsong, a partner of ZHIYUAN AGIBOT, once publicly stated that the scale of the robot leasing market exceeded 1 billion yuan in 2025 and is expected to be no less than 10 billion yuan in 2026.
02. "Burning Money" for Scale?
For platforms, lower rental prices may bring more orders, but for merchants, lower rental prices often mean a longer pay - back period.
Many robot leasing merchants said that the current daily rental price of three to five thousand yuan has basically reached the bottom, with little room for further price cuts. When robots perform and execute operations, engineers need to be on - site, and the rental income also needs to cover transportation costs, labor costs, etc. In the first half of 2025, some leasing merchants could recover their costs in one month. Now, with the rental price dropping from tens of thousands of yuan to a few thousand yuan, the pay - back period of leasing merchants has been greatly extended. Taking a Unitree G1 robot as an example, with a product price of about 220,000 yuan, based on 10 days of orders per month and a daily rental income of 4,000 yuan, it will take about three years to recover the cost.
Source: Canstock
After settling on the leasing platform, merchants also have to bear the service fees charged by the platform, which is also a significant expense in the long run. The service fee is one of the main sources of income for the leasing platform.
It is understood that Qingtian Rent is still in the promotion stage and has waived this part of the service fees for merchants. Li Yiyan once mentioned in an interview that Qingtian Rent has made it clear to investors that all financing will be used for user subsidies and low - price promotion. It will "burn money" to quickly seize the market and does not consider making a profit in the short term.
There are about several hundred domestic robot leasing manufacturers, and Qingtian Rent has gathered 90% of them. Li Liheng, the co - president of Qingtian Rent, said that compared with independent merchants, platform - based leasing allows users to choose across brands without being limited by a single inventory. At the same time, national scheduling and unified performance standards ensure the stability of delivery and emergency response. The platform has accumulated a lot of scenario experience, making robot leasing a "solution - level support" rather than just equipment rental. Next, Qingtian Rent will further deepen its national network layout.
Ding Daoshi, an Internet analyst, believes that the development pattern of the robot leasing industry is more similar to that of the second - hand trading track. In the future, several leading unicorn enterprises may emerge, and platforms like Qingtian Rent will become the mainstream force in the industry, rather than being dominated by giants such as BAT. In the future, when people rent robots, they may subconsciously open the leasing platform, just as they do when taking a taxi or booking a hotel now.
After having sufficient supply, the platform needs to consider how to further enhance the enthusiasm for rental consumption. A sufficiently wide demand scale is the prerequisite for the platform to expand the market and achieve profitability. However, robot leasing is not as necessary and frequent as taking a taxi. Some leasing merchants who have settled on Qingtian Rent and Wanjiyi Rent told Shell Finance that the number of orders they receive from the platform is not as large as that from their own platforms. "The market share of the large platforms has not yet increased."
Ultimately, how large the robot leasing market can grow depends on the implementation of robots in specific scenarios. When robots truly evolve from "performance props" to "productivity tools", the rental demand can break through the limitations of seasonal scenarios such as annual meetings and exhibitions, and form a stable, high - frequency, and sustainable business closed - loop.
What really determines whether platforms like Qingtian Rent can become the next phenomenon - level platform is how many enterprises are willing to rent robots for a long - term replacement of labor in ordinary days, and how many families will habitually open the APP to rent a robot to clean the room or accompany the elderly.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Fun Interpretation of Business", written by Zhang Yuge, and published by 36Kr with authorization.