Humanoid Robots on a Rampage in 2026: Who Will Foot the Bill for the Feast?

Author | Huang Yu   Editor | Song He  

When the stage lights of the 2026 Spring Festival Gala for the Year of the Horse finally dimmed, this gala, jokingly referred to by netizens as the "hardest-core" in history, left a futuristic footnote with the collective appearance of four domestic robot companies: Magic Atom, Galaxy Universal, Unitree Robotics, and Songyan Power.

On that night, Unitree Robotics' G1 and H2 humanoid robots held long sticks in the martial arts program "Wu BOT" and competed on stage with the teenagers from Tagou Wushu School. Their movements of drunken boxing and using nunchucks were smooth, and the red-robed sword dance showed a heroic spirit. Songyan Power's bionic robots incarnated as "robot grandchildren" and cuddled up to Cai Ming, acting coquettishly and playfully in the sketch "Grandma's Favorite", frequently showing off their unique skills such as extending their necks, producing money, and doing somersaults. Magic Atom's MagicBot series shuttled through the main venue of the program "Intelligent Manufacturing for the Future" and performed on stage with artists such as Jordan Chan, Jerry Yan, Luo Jiahao, and Jackson Yee. Its robot dogs and humanoid robots also appeared at the Yibin sub - venue in the program "Standing at the Forefront", interacting with pandas during the performance and adding a lot of scientific and technological fun. Galaxy Universal, as the designated embodied large - model robot for this Spring Festival Gala, had its Galbot G1 show off a tongue - twister in the New Year's greeting micro - film "My Most Unforgettable Tonight", stunning the audience.

From Unitree Robotics' solo "breaking out of the circle" in 2025 with the program "Yang BOT" to the four manufacturers in 2026 each participating in different programs and showcasing their strengths, this "all - star position - grabbing competition" in front of hundreds of millions of people is a microcosm of the rapid development of the Chinese humanoid robot industry in the past year.

When robots moved from the demonstration tables in laboratories to the national - level stage of the Spring Festival Gala, this top - notch high - stakes gamble in the scientific and technological field has reached a critical node for the leap from technological narrative to commercial reality.

In this feast known as the "billion - yuan club", each company on stage tries to establish its position in front of hundreds of millions of viewers and convert its national - level popularity into a winning rate in the commercial landscape. However, behind the bustling spotlight, there is a subtle and dangerous contrast between the high cost of the Spring Festival Gala "ticket" and the yet - to - explode real delivery volume.

This round of "rapid development" of humanoid robots is not only a technology - display show but also a strategic shift from the laboratory to the "budget sheet". What the industry is really competing for is no longer who has more flexible joints or who can complete more difficult flips, but who can be included in the annual capital expenditure list of major customers.

Just as Zhu Xiaohu, the managing partner of Shunwei Capital, once "turned the table" and asked: "Who would spend more than a hundred thousand yuan to buy a robot to do these jobs?"

This question has become a mandatory one for the entire industry in the early spring of 2026.

1 The Choice of Exposure

In the past year, the humanoid robot industry has experienced an accelerated run from laboratory demonstrations to real - world scenario applications and batch deliveries. For the Spring Festival Gala, each company's position in the industry and its own development orientation also determine its different expectations.

The official statements of the four companies on stage after the Spring Festival Gala precisely match their respective track positioning.

As a three - time veteran of the Spring Festival Gala, Unitree Robotics issued an official tweet late at night on February 16, saying that this time it presented the world's first fully autonomous humanoid robot cluster martial arts performance with its G1 and H2 humanoid robots, showing off "cyber real kung - fu" in the Year of the Horse, breaking through the limits of sports performance at one go and setting several global firsts, including the world's first continuous fancy table - flipping parkour, a catapult somersault height of over 3 meters, single - foot continuous somersaults + backward somersaults after two - step wall kicks, seven - and - a - half Airflare rotations, and the fastest cluster rapid movement at 4m/s. It also carried a newly self - developed dexterous hand to realize the rapid replacement and stable grasping of martial arts props.

It also revealed that this performance used a high - concurrency cluster control system and a self - developed AI - integrated positioning algorithm, combined with 3D lidar for precise positioning, and solved the problem of cumulative motion errors. Unitree Robotics also clearly stated that the shipment volume of its humanoid robots exceeded 5,500 units in 2025, a figure higher than the previous forecasts of market research institutions.

Galaxy Universal and Unitree Robotics, as the first - tier companies with valuations exceeding tens of billions, are more focused on enhancing their influence in the capital market and accumulating momentum for the upcoming listing wave.

Galaxy Universal said on February 17 that its robot "Xiaogai"'s tongue - twister performance at the Spring Festival Gala demonstrated the interaction ability of the embodied large model.

According to its official interpretation, this robot also has the technical strength for delicate operations such as playing with walnuts, picking up glass fragments, folding clothes, and skewering sausages, all achieving end - to - end autonomous perception, autonomous decision - making, and autonomous execution, different from the pre - programmed performances of traditional robots.

Galaxy Universal also detailed the technical difficulties of playing with walnuts - the irregular surface of walnuts and the real - time change of stress points. The robot needs to practice repeatedly in the virtual world first and then correct errors in the real world to accumulate a "physical feel" before achieving precise operations.

A relevant person in charge of Galaxy Universal previously revealed that in this Spring Festival Gala, the company's robots highlighted the aspect of "being able to do work", and the greater significance behind it is that being able to do work means opportunities for commercialization.

The third - tier companies such as Songyan Power and Magic Atom, with valuations of around 3 billion yuan, are more like trying to use the Spring Festival Gala to "push themselves closer to the front line" and trying to establish their market coordinates before the industry reshuffle period arrives.

Songyan Power said in an official WeChat tweet late at night on February 16 that it brought its exclusive customized bionic humanoid robot on stage and perfectly cooperated with Cai Ming to complete the sketch performance. To adapt to the complex stage scheduling, the company completed a rapid technological iteration of the entire product within more than a month. The bionic robot on the stage achieved facial expressions and smooth movements almost like a real person.

Songyan Power emphasized that the bionic robot is not a "laboratory product". In 2025, its bionic face products have been applied in commercial guidance and other scenarios. The company is also one of the few in the industry that can mass - produce bionic humanoid robots. This Spring Festival Gala performance is a breakthrough attempt to promote domestic humanoid robots into families and release consumer - level demand.

Magic Atom said in its official statement that it is the only robot company on the Spring Festival Gala stage this year that combines "show performance" and "being able to do work", and completed a high - density technology debut: eight humanoid robots in the main venue assisted the performance of "Intelligent Manufacturing for the Future", and its robot dog MagicDog and humanoid robots MagicBot Z1 and Gen1 also made a surprise appearance in the program "Standing at the Forefront" at the Yibin sub - venue, adding a lot of scientific and technological fun. It said that the simultaneous appearance in multiple scenarios and with multiple models is a comprehensive test of product consistency, control architecture, and engineering reliability, and a concrete manifestation of swarm intelligence.

The stage effect of this Spring Festival Gala gave the most direct market feedback.

According to data released by JD on the 17th, within two hours after the start of the Spring Festival Gala for the Year of the Horse (from 20:00 to 22:00 on February 16), the search volume for robots on the platform increased by more than 300% compared with the previous period, the customer service inquiry volume increased by 460%, and the order volume increased by 150%. The new orders covered more than 100 cities across the country. The "Spring Festival Gala special edition" robots launched by JD on New Year's Eve were quickly snapped up within a few minutes. The products of brands such as Magic Atom, Unitree Robotics, and Songyan Power were all sold out, and two GALBOT universal robots G1 worth nearly 630,000 yuan were also snapped up.

Although the Spring Festival Gala demonstrated the capabilities of these robots and pushed robots onto the hot search again, the reality is that the development of humanoid robots is still in its early stage. In the past, humanoid robots frequently appeared at various exhibitions, but there seem to be few actual real - life application scenarios.

For small and medium - sized start - up companies, finding a balance between high marketing expenses and R & D investment in core technologies is a life - or - death decision. In the view of many company CEOs, rather than performing remotely - controlled dances on the TV screen, it is better to give the money to R & D personnel and do something practical in the factory.

An insider from a Shenzhen robot company told Wall Street News that relevant personnel also had discussions with the company during the Spring Festival Gala preparation stage, but the company thought the cost was too high and did not choose to participate. "The price of participating in the Spring Festival Gala has been changing. At that time, when talking to four or five robot companies in Shenzhen, the idea was to form a team to perform a program at the Spring Festival Gala and jointly bear a cost of one billion yuan. On average, each company would have to pay more than 20 million yuan."

In this person's view, in addition to the high promotion cost, he believes that it is difficult for this Spring Festival Gala to replicate the effect achieved by Unitree last year. Because in 2025, the public already had a certain understanding of humanoid robots. Unless a company can come up with extremely amazing stunts to amaze the audience, it doesn't make much sense to be on the Spring Festival Gala.

ZhiYuan Robotics, which attracted much attention last year, also withdrew from the Spring Festival Gala competition before the Spring Festival. A relevant person in charge of ZhiYuan Robotics told Wall Street News that the core reason for giving up the Spring Festival Gala performance is that the company's budget will be prioritized for the R & D of embodied intelligence technology and product iteration, and it will not consider large - scale stage exposure investment for the time being.

Another person close to a startup robot company said: "At this stage, what humanoid robot companies value most in publicity is to be seen by investors and to bring in direct large - customer orders. After the past year, the benefits brought by public publicity have significantly weakened."

2 Orders and Financing

In 2025, humanoid robots rapidly refreshed the public's understanding through a series of unique events such as running marathons, boxing, and playing football. Simultaneously, the commercialization of humanoid robots has also been accelerating.

In July last year, ZhiYuan Robotics and Unitree Robotics won the bid for the procurement project of humanoid biped robot OEM services of China Mobile Information Technology Co., Ltd. (fully owned by China Mobile), with a total budget of more than 120 million yuan.

Guotai Haitong pointed out that the implementation of this procurement tender is an important milestone in the commercialization process of the domestic humanoid robot industry, and the current humanoid robot industry is at a critical stage of "from 0 to 1".

There have also been many benchmark - like orders.

Ubtech, known as the "first humanoid robot stock", refreshed the world's largest humanoid robot order amount with a 250 - million - yuan order in September 2025, and then won the bid for the "Procurement and Installation of Equipment for the Guangxi Embodied Intelligence Data Collection and Testing Center" project in October, with an order amount of 126 million yuan.

The enthusiasm of the humanoid robot industry is not only reflected on the stage and in multiple large - value orders but also in the financing and listing rhythms of enterprises.

According to IT Juzi data, as of December 21, 2025, more than 600 investors have "genuinely" increased their investment in embodied intelligence. There were more than 304 financing events throughout the year, and the total financing amount reached 37.9 billion yuan, 2.95 times and 4.05 times that of 2024 respectively, and 7.24 times and 4.37 times that of 2023.

Meanwhile, humanoid robot companies have also witnessed a listing boom. Unitree Robotics completed IPO counseling in November 2025 and is rushing to become the "first humanoid robot stock" on the A - share market. ZhiYuan Robotics obtained a listing platform by acquiring Shangwei New Materials and completed management changes. Leading players such as Leju Robotics and Yun Shen Chu are also accelerating their listing processes.

3 The Difficulty of Mass Production

For a long time, humanoid robots have been regarded as the ultimate carrier of artificial general intelligence (AGI) in the physical world, but high R & D costs and vague commercial boundaries have always accompanied them. This situation has undergone a fundamental reversal in the past year.

The crazy influx of capital and the frequent introduction of industrial policies have pushed this industry, which was originally in the deep waters, into the spotlight. However, judging from the actual production capacity in 2025, although the large - scale mass production of humanoid robots has clearly started to increase, it is still in its infancy.

The annual data for 2025 released by Omdia shows that the global shipment volume of humanoid robots was about 13,000 units, more than five times that of 2024.

However, judging from the shipment volumes of specific companies, currently only three companies have shipped more than 1,000 units, and all of them are from China. They are ZhiYuan Robotics, Unitree Robotics, and Ubtech, with corresponding shipment volumes of 5,168 units, 4,200 units, and 1,000 units respectively.

At this stage, shipment volume is something that every company attaches great importance to, and the first position in the market is particularly important. Therefore, for Unitree, which has received the most attention, it also questioned this list where it did not get the first place.

On January 22, Unitree Robotics clarified that the actual shipment volume of its humanoid robots in 2025 exceeded 5,500 units, and the mass production and offline volume of the main bodies in 2025 exceeded 6,500 units.

The company also specifically emphasized that these data are the numbers of pure humanoid robots and do not include other robot products such as two - armed wheeled robots. And in its statement during this Spring Festival Gala, Unitree Robotics emphasized this data again, which is higher than the previous market forecast.

Its active "self - vindication" reflects that humanoid robot companies in 2026 are facing more severe tests.

An investment person in the robot industry told Wall Street News: "The robot industry was very lively last year, but it was more of a year for popularizing public awareness. The outside world had many unrealistic expectations for this industry. This year, the market has become more objective and calm, and it will test the company's delivery ability and the ability to stably put products into use."

This view reflects a certain kind of reflection in the market under the upsurge: without real market orders, no matter how gorgeous the Spring Festival Gala performance is, it can only be an expensive "fireworks show".

TrendForce pointed out that as manufacturers move towards mass - production layout, finding the application value of humanoid robots has become the focus at this stage, and the development focus of manufacturers has shifted from simple hardware and software R & D to the implementation of actual application scenarios.

4 Possible Diverse Paths

For humanoid robots to truly move from the laboratory to large - scale commercial implementation in society, they must first answer the question of "who will pay the bill".

According to the scenario maturity and customer - accounting logic, the current commercialization paths of humanoid robot companies can be roughly divided into four, and the technology demonstrations and official statements of the four companies at this Spring Festival Gala also outline the exploration directions of the industry's diversified commercialization.

First is the "entering the factory" logic in the manufacturing industry, which is currently the path with the highest certainty and the fastest implementation.

In factories with highly controllable environments such as automobile manufacturing, 3C electronics, and warehousing and logistics, humanoid robots are gradually changing from "visiting projects"