2025 WRC: A three-day keynote forum with four Chinese faces witnessing the rise of a powerful country in intelligent manufacturing.

The robotics industry is witnessing one "China Moment" after another.

From August 8th to 12th, the 2025 World Robot Conference (WRC) was held in Beijing. According to statistics, this conference brought together more than 1,500 exhibits from over 200 enterprises, including over 100 debut new products. Fifty humanoid robot whole - machine enterprises participated in the exhibition, setting a record for similar exhibitions.

During the three - day keynote forum from August 8th to 11th, domestic and foreign academicians, experts, representatives of international organizations, and top executives of leading enterprises gathered to share insights on three major aspects of the robotics industry: "Industrial Development", "Innovative Applications", and "Technological Integration".

During this period, Lanfu Finance saw four familiar Chinese faces. The forces they represent are driving China to become a global manufacturing powerhouse.

The First Face: Wang Xingxing, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Unitree Robotics

In the development of the robotics industry, enterprises, as the main force in promoting innovation, are naturally sensitive to technological innovation, product innovation, and industrial innovation. They are the "question - setters", "answer - givers", and "markers" of scientific and industrial innovation.

Wang Xingxing, the founder, CEO, and CTO of Hangzhou Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd., pioneered the development of the high - performance small quadruped robot XDog driven by low - cost outer - rotor brushless motors during his postgraduate studies. In 2016, Unitree Robotics was established. It was the first in the world to publicly retail high - performance quadruped robots, leading in global sales and significantly promoting the global marketization process of high - performance quadruped robots. He was invited to speak at international top - level robotics conferences such as the ICRA 2018 - 2022 Legged Robot Forum. He led his team to apply for more than 200 domestic and foreign patents and led the company's products to appear on top - level stages such as the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Ox and the US Super Bowl.

At the conference, the Unitree combat robot wrestling competition was held passionately. The robots showed high - difficulty actions such as punch - kick combinations, dodges, and blocks, demonstrating their excellent motion control and balance abilities, which were driven by Unitree's millisecond - level response control system. This was not only a performance competition but also a feast of human - machine collaboration.

Wang Xingxing shared his views on the topic of "Opportunities and Challenges in the Large - scale Development of the Robotics Industry". He said that there is a common misunderstanding about robot bodies. People often attribute the current inability to achieve large - scale application or limited functions to insufficient hardware or high costs. However, although the existing hardware still needs continuous optimization, it already has basic usability. The real bottleneck at present is that embodied intelligence is not fully mature, which is the core factor restricting the large - scale application of humanoid robots. Currently, the biggest problem globally is the model problem, not the data problem, and the model architecture of embodied intelligent robots needs to be improved.

The Second Face: Jiang Guangzhi, Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology

Currently, a new round of scientific and industrial revolution is in full swing. Many countries and regions have elevated the development of the humanoid robot industry to a national strategic level. The Chinese government attaches great importance to the development of the robotics industry, continuously strengthening the "soft environment" and increasing "hard support" to help countless entrepreneurs strive with peace of mind.

In this wave of innovation, Beijing has continuously increased its support for the development of the robotics industry, striving to build a globally influential robotics innovation high - ground. Since 2019, it has successively issued two three - year action plans, aiming to build a global robotics technology innovation source, an application demonstration high - ground, and a high - end industrial agglomeration area.

At the conference, Jiang Guangzhi released the "Results of Beijing's 'Double - Hundred Project' for Robotics". According to him, currently, Beijing has cultivated 57 specialized and sophisticated "little giants" in the robotics field, obtained 33 registration certificates for surgical robots, and gathered 30 humanoid robot whole - machine enterprises, all ranking first in the country.

Through the implementation of the project of developing 100 new robot products, focusing on the "1 + 4" robot product system (taking humanoid robots as the core area for planning and layout), it has promoted the leap - forward development of four advantageous robot products: collaborative, medical, special - purpose, and logistics robots. It has supported the formation of 200 innovative robot products in 12 categories, and the high - end product system has basically taken shape. Through the implementation of the project of demonstrating 100 application scenarios, leveraging the rich scenarios in Beijing as a megacity, it has increased the intensity of scenario innovation and supply - demand matching, supporting the first - time use and iterative upgrading of innovative robot products in 134 scenarios across 11 fields, continuously expanding the depth and breadth of application.

Next, Beijing will deeply summarize the experience of the "Double - Hundred Project", focus on the technological innovation and industrial application needs of enterprises, continue to make efforts in both innovative products and high - value scenarios, continuously optimize the industrial development environment, serve the rapid development of the robotics industry, further strengthen the leading role of whole - machine enterprises, further accelerate the opening of all - area scenarios, and further optimize the guarantee of industrial factors to serve the rapid development of the robotics industry.

The Third Face: Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering

The rise of Chinese intelligent robots is a scientific and technological long - march from catching up to leading. A large number of engineering talents from the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, along with their research strength, are the driving force behind the development of the entire industry.

Ni Guangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has been engaged in the research and development of computers and their applications. He participated in the development of China's first self - designed electronic tube computer (the 119 machine). In the 1960s and 1970s, he carried out research on Chinese character processing and character recognition and pioneered the application of the association function in Chinese character input. As the first chief engineer of Lenovo Group, he led the research and development of the Lenovo Chinese character card and microcomputers, which won the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1988 and 1992 respectively. He won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Chinese Information Processing Society of China in 2011 and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the China Computer Federation in 2015.

In his speech titled "AI + Spatial Computing Enables Machines to Understand the World", Ni Guangnan said that "AI + Spatial Computing" has opened a new paradigm for the development from two - dimensional interaction to three - dimensional interaction. As a new computing method, spatial computing is a bridge between the physical world and the digital world, reshaping the interaction mode among humans, machines, and the world. It is one of the key core technologies for promoting the implementation of robots.

In the era when artificial intelligence is leading the transformation of the scientific and technological paradigm, under the general situation of the country's implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence +" initiative, we should promote the development of robots to AI + robots to better play their role as new - quality productive forces. To meet this requirement, the key lies in improving the intelligent evaluation of robots. We need a brain - eye - action coordinated system to improve the intelligence level of robots, enabling them to truly see, understand, and act in the world.

The Fourth Face: Cao Wei, a partner of BlueRun Ventures

Finance is like water, and enterprises are like boats. The industry generally believes that embodied intelligence/humanoid robots, as future industries, are still in the early stage of development and need continuous attention and careful nurturing from capital. In 2025, "patient capital", "intelligent robots", and "embodied intelligence" were included in this year's government work report: Improve the differentiated supervision system for venture capital funds, strengthen policy - based financial support, accelerate the development of venture capital, and expand patient capital.

In the new wave of generative AI, BlueRun Ventures has frequently appeared in leading projects, often as the first - round or early - stage investor. Since 2021, BlueRun has successively invested in large - model companies such as Xihu Xinchen and Dark Side of the Moon, and AI application companies such as Genspark, Muyan Zhiyu, and Yu Ai Wei Wu. In the field of embodied intelligence, BlueRun has been particularly aggressive, investing in Zhipu Robotics, Galaxy Universal, and Lingchu Intelligence. Among them, BlueRun invested in Zhipu Robotics for two consecutive rounds, and both Galaxy and Lingchu were invested in at the angel round.

As a partner of BlueRun Ventures, Cao Wei participated in the investment of star (humanoid) robot startups such as Galaxy Universal Robotics, Zhipu Robotics, and Gaoxian Robotics. In his view, embodied intelligence, including humanoid robots, will enter a "performance evaluation" window period in the second half of 2025. Whether the current wave of financing enthusiasm can continue depends on the "performance" of enterprises.

Cao Wei firmly believes that general - purpose robots driven by embodied intelligence will still be a technological theme worthy of attention in the capital market in the next 10 years. As the society's attention and expectations for embodied intelligence and humanoid robots far exceed the current technological development level, it is foreseeable that the investment market sentiment will cool down. However, this does not affect the upward - spiraling development trend of this emerging technology.

On August 11th, the robot project roadshow and investment - financing matching session was held in Beijing Yizhuang. Co - hosted by Shoucheng Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Source Code Capital, and the Beijing Economic - Technological Development Area's Bureau of Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Industry, it carefully selected 11 high - potential star projects, aiming to gather industrial resources, capital power, and innovative wisdom to build a new ecosystem for the robotics industry. It is reported that investors from more than 100 leading investment institutions attended the event.

 This article is from the WeChat official account "Lanfu Finance Network", author: Lanfu Finance Network, published by 36Kr with authorization.