90 billion yuan in half a year, who is hyping the robotics sector?

In 2026, the robotics industry is embracing a new highlight moment.

Public data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that from January to May 2026, the operating revenue of enterprises above designated size in China's robotics industry exceeded 90 billion yuan, up 26.9% year on year, with the average annual growth rate of the industry exceeding 20% in the past five years. From industrial scale to capital attention, from supply chain orders to the performance of listed companies, robotics is becoming another new track that has received high market attention following new energy vehicles and artificial intelligence.

Changes across the industrial chain are even more notable. At the end of June, a domestic humanoid robot enterprise launched new products and received over 10,000 orders in less than a month; a frameless motor manufacturer in Shenzhen revealed that its on-hand orders in the first half of this year exceeded 1 million units, while the total orders for the whole of last year were only 120,000 units. As an important component of humanoid robot joints, the rapid growth in demand for frameless motors is regarded as a key signal that industrial prosperity is transmitting to the upstream.

The capital market has also begun to give feedback. With the successive disclosure of the semi-annual report forecasts of listed companies, the performance of many enterprises in the robotics industrial chain has seen significant growth, and the profit growth rate of some enterprises has reached several times or even more than ten times.

Everything seems to indicate that the robotics era is coming at an accelerated pace.

But at the same time, a question has begun to emerge: Is this a real industrial revolution, or just another capital-chased trend?

Over the past few decades, robotics has not been an unfamiliar concept. Industrial robots have long been applied in the manufacturing industry, but the real commercialization of humanoid robots still faces multiple challenges in technology, cost, application scenarios and other aspects. When capital pours in and enterprises place bets one after another, what exactly is happening in this industry?

The Trend Is Coming

If we look back at the development of the technology industry over the past two decades, we will find that behind every industrial wave there is a common feature: they do not emerge suddenly, but usher in an outbreak at a certain point in time after long-term accumulation.

The same is true for the Internet, new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, and robotics.

Many people's impression of robots comes from the future scenes in science fiction movies: robots that can understand human instructions, act autonomously, and even possess human-like capabilities. But in fact, the robotics industry has been developing for decades.

Early robots mainly served industrial manufacturing.

Robotic arms in automobile factories and automated equipment in electronic manufacturing are essentially applications of robotics technology. The problems solved by these robots are very clear: to complete highly repetitive and high-precision work in a fixed environment.

However, such robots also have obvious limitations.

They need to be pre-programmed and can only operate in a relatively stable environment. Once faced with complex and changing real scenarios, such as items of different sizes, dynamically changing environments, and operation requirements that cannot be predicted by humans, traditional robots can hardly cope.

The emergence of humanoid robots attempts to change this situation.

Compared with traditional industrial robots, the goal of humanoid robots is not to complete a single task, but to become a more general-purpose intelligent device. It has a human-like structure, and theoretically can enter more human work and life scenarios through bipedal walking, manipulator operation and environmental perception capabilities.

But what really promoted humanoid robots into the public view is not the mechanical structure itself, but the development of artificial intelligence.

In the past, there has always been a core contradiction in robots: they have a "body" but lack a "brain".

Robots can perform actions according to procedures, but cannot truly understand the environment, nor can they make independent judgments based on complex situations. The development of large model technology has begun to change this situation. Artificial intelligence is endowing robots with stronger perception and decision-making capabilities. Robots are no longer just machines executing preset programs, but have the opportunity to become intelligent terminals that can understand tasks, learn the environment and continuously optimize behaviors.

This is also why over the past year or more, global technology enterprises have begun to refocus on the robotics industry. From Tesla's layout of humanoid robots to a large number of domestic robotics enterprises entering the market, robots are becoming an important direction for artificial intelligence to land in the real world.

For Chinese enterprises, this round of robotics wave has special significance. Over the past few decades, China's manufacturing industry has formed the world's most complete industrial chain system. From motors and precision components to electronic components and industrial processing capabilities, China has had the foundation for large-scale manufacturing of complex equipment. And the robotics industry exactly requires such supply chain capabilities. A humanoid robot is not a simple mechanical device, it involves a large number of core components, including motors, reducers, control systems, sensors, batteries and so on. Among them, the joint actuator is a key link that determines the motion capability of the robot.

Therefore, when humanoid robots begin to enter the stage of industrial exploration, the upstream supply chain is the first to feel the changes.

The growth of frameless motor orders is a typical case.

In the past, such components were mainly used in industrial automation, medical equipment and other fields. With the increase in demand for humanoid robots, suppliers have ushered in new market space. But for the robotics industry, the real challenge has just begun.

Capital can promote the development of the industry, and technology can reduce costs, but what ultimately determines the value of robots is still whether they can enter real commercial scenarios.

Commercialization Test Behind the Orders

The popularity of the robotics industry is constantly rising, but there is still a certain distance from real large-scale commercialization.

At present, the market's expectations for humanoid robots are mainly focused on two directions.

The first direction is the manufacturing industry.

China has the world's largest manufacturing system. Over the past few decades, automation has become an important way for factories to improve efficiency. However, with the change of population structure and the upgrading of manufacturing industry, enterprises have new demands for more flexible automated equipment.

Traditional industrial robots are good at repetitive actions, but cannot adapt to complex environments. Humanoid robots can theoretically fill this gap.

For example, in scenarios such as automobile manufacturing, electronic assembly, warehousing and logistics, humanoid robots can undertake some repetitive and high-intensity work, helping enterprises reduce labor costs and improve production efficiency.

The second direction is service scenarios.

In the future, humanoid robots may enter fields such as commercial services, home assistance, and elderly care. Compared with industrial scenarios, the service sector has greater imagination space, as it directly connects ordinary consumers. But at the same time, service scenarios have higher requirements for robots.

The factory environment is relatively controllable, while homes and public spaces are more complex. Robots not only need to complete actions, but also need to understand human needs and cope with various unexpected situations. This means that there are still a large number of technical problems to be solved before humanoid robots truly enter the public life. Therefore, the current growth of orders in the market is more like a signal that the industry has entered the verification stage.

Enterprises' procurement of robots does not necessarily mean that robots have been maturely applied, and may also include demands such as R&D testing, scenario exploration and commercial verification. This is similar to the development path of many emerging industries in the past.

In the early days of new energy vehicles, the industry also experienced market doubts. In the initial stage of artificial intelligence applications, it was also considered far from commercialization. But with the maturity of technology and the decline of costs, the industry has gradually found real large-scale application scenarios.

The robotics industry may also go through a similar process. What capital pays attention to is not how much work robots can do today, but whether they can become a new production tool in the future. If robots can significantly improve manufacturing efficiency, what they may change is not just an enterprise, but a whole set of industrial system.

This is also why robots have received such high market attention. But at the same time, the robotics industry is also undergoing a selection process.

In the past few years, whenever a new trend emerged, a large number of enterprises would be attracted to enter. The same was true for new energy vehicles, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence. However, the enterprises that can really survive are often not the ones with the strongest storytelling ability, but the ones that can solve practical problems. The future competition in the robotics industry will not only be about who can manufacture a robot with a more human-like appearance.

The really important question is: who can enable robots to create real economic value.

From a technical perspective, robots need to solve problems such as motion control, artificial intelligence, perception and interaction; from a commercial perspective, it is necessary to find application scenarios with acceptable costs and clear demands.

Only when robots can replace part of the labor force and create higher efficiency, will the industry truly enter the outbreak stage. Therefore, the current boom of the robotics industry is more like an early industrial bet.

The market is paying for the future, but whether the future can be fulfilled still needs to be verified by time.

Who Will Be the Winner

Robots are becoming a new battlefield for global technology industry competition.

But if you observe in depth, you will find that this competition is not a simple technical competition, but a long-term contest of industrial capabilities.

American enterprises have advantages in the field of artificial intelligence, Japanese enterprises have accumulated robotics technology for a long time, while Chinese enterprises have a complete manufacturing system and rich application scenarios.

Different countries are giving full play to their respective advantages.

For China, the biggest opportunity of the robotics industry is not just to manufacture robots themselves, but to promote the upgrading of intelligent manufacturing by relying on the manufacturing foundation.

In the past, China's manufacturing industry became a global manufacturing center by virtue of its scale advantage. In the future, the core of manufacturing competition may shift from "producing more products" to "producing products in a more intelligent way".

Robots are exactly an important part of this change. The future winner is not necessarily only the enterprise that manufactures the complete machine. In the robotics industry, upstream core components also have important value. Links such as motors, reducers, control systems and sensors may all become key nodes for industrial development. In fact, the competition pattern finally formed by many industrial revolutions is not that a single enterprise wins, but that a whole set of industrial chains grow together.

The development of new energy vehicles is not only the competition of complete vehicle enterprises, but also drives the development of industrial chains such as batteries, electronic control and materials. The development of artificial intelligence does not only belong to model companies, but also promotes the development of chips, servers and data infrastructure. The same may be true for the robotics industry in the future. But for enterprises, the biggest challenge is still commercialization. The robotics industry has huge imagination space, but imagination space is not equal to market value. Many technologies in the past did not become mainstream in the end, not because the direction was wrong, but because no suitable commercial path was found.

The same is true for robots. In the next few years, the industry will enter a more critical stage. On the one hand, technology is advancing continuously, costs are declining steadily, and more application scenarios are beginning to open; on the other hand, capital enthusiasm will gradually return to rationality, and the gap between enterprises will become more and more obvious. Only those companies that truly have core technology, supply chain capabilities and commercial implementation capabilities will have the opportunity to go through the cycle.

The 90 billion yuan industrial scale growth in half a year shows that robots are no longer just technologies in the laboratory, but are becoming part of the real industry. However, there is still a long way to go from the rise of the industry to truly changing the world. Robots are not a simple trend, but a long-term competition for the future mode of manufacturing.

Now, capital is placing bets.

And the real winner needs time to prove itself.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Rongzhong Finance" (ID: thecapital), written by LYU Jingzhi, and published with authorization from 36Kr.