A Chinese robotics company is recruiting with a daily salary of 500,000 yuan! What's the level?

"The annual salary starts at 15 million yuan and can reach up to 124 million yuan!" Recently, UBTECH, the "first stock of humanoid robots", issued a strong recruitment call.

UBTECH stated that it is looking for a Chief Scientist of Embodied Intelligence globally. "We don't look at passports, age, or gender. We only look at one thing: Can you define the future?"

It is reported that this position will be responsible for formulating UBTECH's technical roadmap in the fields of humanoid robots and embodied intelligence, and leading the research and development of artificial intelligence models.

Compared with the "three don't cares", the maximum annual salary of 124 million yuan in the recruitment notice has really caught people's attention. What does an annual salary of 124 million yuan mean?

This is equivalent to a monthly salary of 10.3333 million yuan. If calculated based on 248 working days a year, it is equivalent to a daily salary of about 500,000 yuan.

The financial report shows that in 2025, UBTECH achieved a total revenue of 2.001 billion yuan and a net loss of 790 million yuan during the year. 124 million yuan is 6.2% of UBTECH's annual revenue.

Compared with other Hong Kong-listed companies, this annual salary level is also quite rare.

Wind data shows (as of April 3), in 2025, only 10 Hong Kong-listed companies had a total annual management compensation in the hundreds of millions. Except for BYD Co., Ltd., Midea Group, and Fosun Pharma, which are listed in both places, the other seven are Alibaba, MGM China, NIRAKU, Sun Hung Kai Properties, New World Development, Honma Golf, and Chow Tai Fook.

Let's compare with A-share listed companies.

As of April 3, among the A-share listed companies that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, no executive or individual had a compensation reaching 100 million yuan. Currently, only BYD, Midea Group, Mindray Medical, and Fosun Pharma have a total annual management compensation in the hundreds of millions, which are 129 million yuan, 121 million yuan, 120 million yuan, and 111 million yuan respectively; Wuxi AppTec ranks fifth with a total annual management compensation of 99.05 million yuan.

Looking abroad, Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, had a total compensation of 49.9 million US dollars (about 363 million yuan) in the 2025 fiscal year. This means that the maximum annual salary for this position at UBTECH is about one-third of Jensen Huang's.

In terms of ordinary engineer positions, Zhongxin Jingwei found through inquiries on a robotics and automation job bulletin board platform that NVIDIA's simulation robot software engineer position has an annual salary of 152,000 - 242,000 US dollars (about 1.046 - 1.665 million yuan).

"Such high salaries are not common in the Chinese AI industry," pointed out Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao. Behind this is the real dilemma of humanoid robot companies at present - a shortage of talent.

On April 3, a relevant person from Leju Robotics told Zhongxin Jingwei, "Currently, the robot industry is developing rapidly, and there is indeed a shortage of talent. The salary differences among employees vary greatly depending on the positions." The company was founded in 2016 and is a national-level specialized and sophisticated "little giant" enterprise focusing on the R & D and industrialization of core technologies for humanoid robots.

In August 2025, after Yushu Robotics, a leading player, won the 400-meter final championship at the World Humanoid Robot Games, its founder Wang Xingxing called out: The Beijing branch has been established, and we are urgently recruiting talent.

Behind the shortage of talent is the accelerated development of the Chinese robot industry. In the 2026 government work report, "embodied intelligence" was clearly listed as one of the future industries to be cultivated and strengthened.

According to CCTV News, during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, it is estimated that about 100 relevant innovation centers and laboratories will be added in the upstream and downstream of the Chinese embodied intelligence industrial chain. The overall industrial scale is expected to exceed hundreds of billions or trillions of yuan by 2030. At the same time, more than 1 million new employment positions such as data collectors and robot group collaborative operation engineers will be added.

With a shortage of one million talents, high salaries are not only for "recruiting" but also for "retaining" talent. Through competitive salaries, Chinese robot companies are expected to transform scarce intellectual capital into core assets on the one hand; on the other hand, continuous investment in talent will accelerate product iteration and reduce trial-and-error costs, establishing a strong moat in the fierce global competition.

During the window period when the humanoid robot industry is moving towards commercialization, Chinese companies' large-scale investment in talent is not just a simple act of "recruiting troops", but a strategy related to survival and breakthrough.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Zhongxin Jingwei" (ID: jwview) , written by Dong Wenbo and Xie Jingwen, and published by 36Kr with authorization.