6.8 billion. The largest procurement in the history of embodied robots is here.

The procurement quantity is 8,500 units, involving Unitree, Zhipu, Deep Robotics, Ubtech, Fourier, etc.

Robot Forward reported on April 24th that recently, State Grid Corporation of China issued the “2026 Embodied Intelligence Development Plan” internally. It plans to centrally procure about 8,500 units of various embodied intelligent devices this year, with a total investment of about 6.8 billion yuan, focusing on four major scenarios: power inspection, live-line work, emergency rescue, and warehousing and logistics.

01. Three types of robots are procured, with a cumulative procurement amount of 5.8 billion yuan

According to the document, in 2026, State Grid adopted a strategy of phased centralized procurement, that is, pilot procurement in the first quarter; large-scale procurement in the third quarter; supplementary procurement in the fourth quarter.

The procurement list is divided into three major categories: quadrupedal inspection robot dogs, humanoid live-line work robots, and dual-arm inspection robots, with a total procurement amount of 5.8 billion yuan.

Among them, quadrupedal inspection robot dogs are the category with the highest procurement volume, with a procurement quantity of 5,000 units and a budget of 1.5 billion yuan. They will be mainly deployed in substations, transmission lines, and mountainous power grids;

Humanoid live-line work robots are the category with the highest unit price, with a procurement quantity of 500 units and a budget of 2.5 billion yuan. The application scenarios cover distribution network live-line work and UHV projects;

The procurement quantity of dual-arm inspection robots is 3,000 units, with a budget of 1.8 billion yuan, mainly used for substation equipment operation and fault handling.

At the same time, the document clearly requires that all the above procurement equipment must comply with State Grid’s “Technical Specifications for Power Embodied Intelligent Equipment” and preferably select cooperation manufacturers that can be deeply adapted to the Guangming Power large model and support local deployment to ensure data security.

The remaining total investment of 1 billion yuan will be invested in two fields: technology R & D (800 million yuan) and talent cultivation (200 million yuan).

According to Jiemian News, the robot body companies for this procurement include Deep Robotics, Unitree, Zhipu, Ubtech, Fourier, etc.

02. The safety accident rate is reduced by 80%, and the annual intelligent investment is about 80 billion yuan

State Grid expects that after introducing embodied intelligent devices to replace manual labor, each device can save 500,000 to 800,000 yuan in labor costs annually, and the investment payback period is about 2 to 3 years;

At the same time, the inspection efficiency is increased by 5 times compared with the past, the average fault handling time is shortened by 60%, and the power supply reliability is increased by 0.5 percentage points;

More importantly, by replacing manual labor with intelligent devices, State Grid can reduce the exposure risk of more than 90% of high-risk workers and reduce the safety accident rate by 80%.

The planning document shows that the annual intelligent investment scale of State Grid is about 80 billion yuan. The 6.8 billion yuan of funds related to embodied intelligence that have been invested so far only account for 8.75% of its annual intelligent investment.

According to State Grid’s development plan, the implementation of embodied intelligence in various scenarios will be steadily promoted in stages:

In 2026, increase the penetration rate of embodied intelligence in key areas to 30%;

In 2027, achieve an application penetration rate of over 80% for intelligent agents, and at the same time promote embodied intelligent devices to cover more than 80% of high-risk work scenarios;

In 2030, achieve the deep integration of embodied intelligence and digital twin power grid, and fully achieve the goal of autonomous operation and maintenance of the power grid.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Robot Forward”, author: Ge Wenting, published by 36Kr with authorization.