The Two Sides of Embodied Robots: Calm Capital, Booming Market
Recently, Pacini, an enterprise specializing in intelligent complete machines and sensors, completed a new round of Series A financing, which was strategically led by JD.com. Notably, in addition to Pacini, JD.com has also invested in five other robotics companies, including ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS, QIANXUN INTELLIGENCE, ZHUJI DYNAMICS, and ZHONGQING ROBOTICS, in the past three months.
Embodied robots have triggered a wave of financing. However, compared with the expected trillion - level market size by the public, the quantity and scale of investment and financing in embodied robots are far lower than expectations. Zhu Xiaohu even publicly stated that he had exited several embodied robot companies, believing that there is a bubble in the industry and that rationality is needed.
While the capital market remains calm, both consumer robots on the C - end and industrial robots on the B - end are showing a lively momentum. It can be said that the current embodied robot market presents two sides: one lively and the other calm.
Embodied Robots Become "Performance Stars"
What exactly can embodied robots do? For most people, the most impressive event is the performance of 16 Unitree "Fu Xi" embodied robots performing the Northeast Yangko dance at this year's Spring Festival Gala on CCTV.
The robots' Yangko dance also became a hot topic during the Spring Festival. According to WeChat Index, on January 29th, the daily month - on - month growth rate of the humanoid robot index reached 594.84%, and the live - broadcast index of humanoid robots increased by 8916 times.
(Source: WeChat)
On the JD.com platform of Unitree Technology, the Unitree G1 priced at 99,000 yuan per unit and the Unitree H1 priced at 650,000 yuan per unit were all sold out.
The sense of technology brought into reality has piqued the public's curiosity and exploration desire for humanoid robots, and also spawned new demands and industries.
One is robot commercial performance leasing, which is charged by the day. To increase popularity, shopping malls, stores, and even exhibitions use embodied robots as one of the selling points of marketing activities to attract customers.
Taking the Shanghai IFC Mall as an example, to increase the number of visitors, the mall rented two humanoid robots from DIBIAO MARK. The robots performed customized dances, greeted guests, had emotional conversations, and interacted with a variety of actions for the on - site audience.
Just through these performance actions, a large number of customers were attracted. The number of serviced customers reached 1000 times per day, and the in - store conversion rate was increased by 22%.
Judging from the data, the commercial performances of embodied robots can really increase the traffic and actual sales conversion rate of merchants, but their prices are not cheap.
It is understood that in the first half of this year, the rental price of a humanoid robot could reach up to 20,000 yuan per day. According to this rental price, a Unitree G1 only needs to be rented for 5 days to recover the cost, and the higher - priced H1 only needs a month to recover the cost, and the rest is all profit.
The second is to conduct robot science popularization tours and make money from tickets. Many companies hoard a large number of robots and conduct science popularization tours across the country, just like celebrities holding concerts.
Taking Huanmeng Technology as an example, the company currently has 1000 robots, including humanoid robots, robot dogs, and robotic arms. They show performances such as dancing, martial arts, calligraphy, and playing chess for the audience. Its team of more than 100 people is usually divided into three squads to conduct robot tours in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
A staff member of the company told Huxiu that even with a 50% occupancy rate, the net profit of one tour of the company ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan.
Embodied robots have become a national trend and have shown economic value in industries such as exhibition and leasing. However, the value of embodied robots lies not only in the C - end but also in a larger market space on the B - end.
Embodied Robots Enter Factories
"Embodied artificial intelligence refers to intelligent systems that can understand, reason, and interact with the physical world." When talking about the next wave after AI, Huang Renxun gave the answer of embodied robots and believes that in the future, humanoid robots will be as popular as cars.
Taking the automotive manufacturing industry as an example, in addition to traditional processes such as welding and painting, the biggest application scenario of embodied robots is in the material feeding and transfer process. Traditionally, material feeding and transfer were usually carried out manually. These materials can weigh from more than ten kilograms to hundreds of kilograms. Manual handling is not only inefficient and error - prone but also causes physical damage to employees.
Embodied robots are different. Through intelligent cameras and QR codes, they can identify hundreds of different parts and place these parts on different production lines without rest for 24 hours.
Previously, due to technical problems such as recognition efficiency, the cooperation between embodied robots and manufacturing factories remained in the testing stage. However, with technological breakthroughs, embodied robots have begun to be widely used in the material feeding and handling process on production lines.
(Source: Jining News)
For example, in April 2024, the success rate of the A2 - W embodied robot under ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS in the laboratory for parts feeding and transfer was only 60%, but this year, the transfer success rate in the laboratory reached 99.9%.
It is precisely because of the technological breakthrough that Fuling Precision Industry purchased nearly 100 Yuanzheng A2 - W embodied robots from ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS. In the task of handling more than 800 turnover boxes per shift in a two - shift system, the nearly 100 Yuanzheng A2 - W robots had zero errors.
"Previously, these tasks required a large amount of manual operation, which was not only inefficient but also prone to errors. Since the introduction of robotic arms, the production efficiency has increased by 30%, and the product qualification rate has also increased from the original 85% to 95%," a person in charge of Fuling Precision Industry told Shanghai Securities News, saying that embodied intelligence has been fully implemented in the industrial field.
In fact, it is not only ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS. Domestic embodied robot companies such as UBTECH ROBOTICS and Unitree Technology have begun to show a trend of "entering factories".
On July 20th this year, UBTECH ROBOTICS won a 90.5115 million yuan robot equipment procurement project from Miyi Automobile, and its industrial humanoid robot Walker S1 entered the BYD Automobile Factory for practical training;
Lingbao CASBOT Company said that leading customers in industries such as industrial manufacturing, new energy, and automotive have conducted batch testing and even small - scale deployment of its embodied robot products, and large - scale commercial implementation is not far away;
SONGYAN DYNAMICS, which won the championship in the humanoid robot half - marathon, received more than 2000 commercial orders in the first half of this year, with the total contract value expected to exceed 100 million yuan:
On the B - end, which is not visible to the public, embodied robots have moved from the first stage of the laboratory, the second stage of small - scale factory testing, to the third stage of large - scale mass production.
The Capital Market Remains Relatively Calm
"Embodied artificial intelligence refers to intelligent systems that can understand, reason, and interact with the physical world." When talking about the next wave after AI, Huang Renxun gave the answer of embodied robots and believes that in the future, humanoid robots will be as popular as cars.
Whether from the booming consumer - grade market or the current large - scale application in the industrial manufacturing field, the future of embodied robots is full of imagination, which has also attracted a large amount of capital to enter.
According to IT Juzi statistics, in the first three months of 2025, there were 54 investment and financing transactions in Chinese embodied intelligent robots, with a scale of 6.046 billion yuan. The number of financing enterprises has exceeded that of the whole year of 2023.
In July this year alone, embodied robot manufacturers received several large - scale financings:
"XINGDONG JIYUAN" announced that it had received nearly 500 million yuan in Series A financing led by CDH VGC and Haier Capital; "YUNSHENCHU" announced the completion of nearly 500 million yuan in financing led by Fortune Capital and Guoxin Fund; "TASHI ZHIHANG" completed a $122 million Angel + round of financing led by Meituan's strategic investment; "XINGHAITU" completed two rounds of financing, Series A4 and Series A5... "
However, at the same time, some capital remains on the sidelines in the embodied robot industry.
"I asked several CEOs where their potential commercial customers were. I felt that the customers they mentioned were all imagined. Who would spend hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy a robot to do these jobs?" Zhu Xiaohu said that the enthusiasm for embodied intelligence is too high, and it needs to go through a bubble period, and rational thinking is required.
In reality, the calmness of capital can also be felt. At the 2025 World Robot Conference, Xu Xiaolan, the president of the China Electronics Society, said that the market space for humanoid robots in China's industrial manufacturing field may reach 1.6 trillion yuan in 2035, and the market space for humanoid robots in the domestic service field may reach 1.9 trillion yuan.
For a sunrise industry with a trillion - level scale ten years later, the total financing amount of embodied intelligence in 2024 was less than 10 billion yuan. Compared with the public's expectations for embodied intelligence ten years later, such an investment level is relatively low.
In the secondary market, the calmness and wait - and - see attitude of capital towards embodied robots can also be felt.
ESTUN AUTOMATION, a company in the concept stock of embodied robots mainly engaged in servo systems, had a market value of 22.4 billion yuan on August 15, 2022. Three years later, on August 15, its market value was 21 billion yuan, a decrease of 1.4 billion yuan compared with three years ago;
UBTECH ROBOTICS, which focuses on industrial embodied robots, had a market value of HK$43.8 billion on August 15, 2025. In October 2024, its market value once approached HK$48 billion, a decrease of nearly HK$4.2 billion compared with the high point last year.
(Source: Baidu Stock Market Tong)
Even ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS needed to spend 2.1 billion yuan to acquire 63.62% of the equity of SHANGWEI NEW MATERIALS, a listed company on the A - share market, which was questioned by the outside world as a back - door listing. In response to the outside world's doubts, ZHIYUAN ROBOTICS said that it was only an acquisition of controlling equity and did not constitute a back - door listing as defined in the "Measures for Major Asset Reorganizations".
On one hand, there is the traffic frenzy brought by the lively performances and leasing on the consumer end and the quiet start of the "factory - entering wave" after technological breakthroughs on the industrial end. On the other hand, there is the current calm wait - and - see attitude of the capital market. Embodied robots present their unique two sides.
Whether embodied robots can cross the current "performance period" and "testing period" and ultimately break the situation depends on whether they can continuously prove their core ability to solve practical problems and a clear commercialization path. When embodied intelligence truly matures and can solve practical problems in production and life, this is the ultimate question that embodied intelligence must answer on its way from a trend to an industry's maturity.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Siku Finance", author: Qingfu. Republished by 36Kr with permission.