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Beyond Marathons and Backflips, China’s Robots Face a Commercial Test

Children look at a remote-controlled robot by Unitree Robotics while visiting the Unitree Robotics Embodied Intelligence Experience Center in the Jing' an district in Shanghai on August 17, 2026. (AFP)
Children look at a remote-controlled robot by Unitree Robotics while visiting the Unitree Robotics Embodied Intelligence Experience Center in the Jing' an district in Shanghai on August 17, 2026. (AFP)
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Beyond Marathons and Backflips, China’s Robots Face a Commercial Test

Children look at a remote-controlled robot by Unitree Robotics while visiting the Unitree Robotics Embodied Intelligence Experience Center in the Jing' an district in Shanghai on August 17, 2026. (AFP)
Children look at a remote-controlled robot by Unitree Robotics while visiting the Unitree Robotics Embodied Intelligence Experience Center in the Jing' an district in Shanghai on August 17, 2026. (AFP)

China's humanoid robot makers have spent the past two years dazzling investors with machines that can breakdance, throw punches and even set marathon records. This week in Beijing, they face a tougher test in proving their inventions can work reliably to generate economic value.

More than 300 companies are expected at the World Robot Conference from Wednesday through Sunday, showcasing over 2,000 exhibits and launching more than 150 products, according to Beijing authorities.

The conference coincides with the Shanghai stock market debut of Unitree, one of the world's largest humanoid robot makers by sales volume, after an initial public offering that was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors.

Unitree founder Wang Xingxing will address the conference's main forum on Thursday on the next decade of the humanoid industry, according to the Beijing municipal government.

The event comes as investor enthusiasm around Chinese humanoids reaches new ‌heights, but the conversation ‌is shifting from viral demonstrations to commercial reality. Investors and customers are increasingly judging robots ‌not ⁠by how spectacularly they ⁠move, but by how productively they work, how much human supervision they require and whether they can earn a return on their cost.

Although robots in China are starting to replace human workers in niche applications such as hotel food deliveries and on some assembly lines, large-scale adoption across industries beyond limited pilot projects has yet to occur.

FROM DEMOS TO DEPLOYMENT

Some in the industry argue that reckoning is overdue. Lumos Robotics, a Mitsubishi Electric-backed startup exhibiting at WRC, has focused its MOS robot on industrial inspection and material handling rather than household or entertainment applications.

CEO Yu Chao told Reuters the companies most at risk in China's crowded embodied-AI sector were those developing ⁠robot bodies, models or data in isolation without proving their technology in actual applications.

For Yu, the ‌eventual shakeout will come down to a simple question: can a robot ‌create value for a customer? Companies that cannot, he said, "will be washed out."

Georg Stieler, a robotics analyst who advises industrial companies in China, ‌estimates that 50% to 70% of humanoid robots produced this year could end up in "data factories", where they are used ‌to collect training data rather than perform productive work for paying customers.

Guotai Securities, a Chinese brokerage, estimates an industrial humanoid would need to cost about 160,000 yuan, including maintenance, to pay for itself within two years compared with a worker earning 80,000 yuan annually.

In reality, such robots typically cost 300,000 to 500,000 yuan, according to Berlin-based think tank MERICS.

ROBOT GAMES TEST WORK ABILITY

Some of the industry's claims will face ‌a more public test from Saturday.

The World Humanoid Robot Games, running from August 22 to 26 at Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval, will combine headline-grabbing races, football and fighting with ⁠a growing number of competitions designed ⁠around actual work.

Official plans include factory, hotel and household scenarios, with organizers requiring robots in some events to perform longer, continuous tasks in complex environments.

The competition schedule reviewed by Reuters includes packing and warehousing, industrial assembly and material feeding, retail and office services, electric-vehicle charging and dexterous tasks such as connecting cables and using tools.

Unlike a sprint or dance routine, such tasks test whether robots can identify unfamiliar objects, manipulate them repeatedly, recover from mistakes and complete jobs without engineers stepping in.

A GLOBAL PROBLEM

The challenge of turning impressive demonstrations into economically viable products is not confined to China.

In the United States, Jerry Wang, CEO of AIxCrypto Holdings, recently launched RoboShare, a marketplace designed to let businesses rent robots by the task rather than buy them outright.

Wang said one of the biggest bottlenecks today is not the robots themselves but the surrounding ecosystem. Skilled operators remain scarce, while transportation, deployment and maintenance costs can make robotic labor uneconomic.

Geopolitics is adding another layer of uncertainty. The US Federal Communications Commission in July restricted new equipment authorizations for foreign-made advanced robotic devices, affecting companies including Unitree, though previously authorized models can still be sold.

Technology research firm IDC estimates China accounts for 82% of global humanoid shipments. Under its worst-case scenario for the US restrictions, US humanoid sales would be 58% below its prior baseline forecast by 2030.

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Technology

Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
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Under Fire over AI, Effective Altruism Wants to Tell Its Own Story

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in effective altruism’s early days, although he now denies any link. ANDREJ IVANOV / AFP

The effective altruism movement, which has close ties to the AI community and the companies leading the artificial intelligence boom, has drawn mainstream attention and accusations of cult-like behavior and alarmism.

The hard-to-define movement is still growing, and wants to better explain its values amid bitter criticism from the Trump administration and some powerful voices in Silicon Valley.

Its founding principle is to give money or time to major causes as effectively as possible, an intentionally dispassionate approach has at times been called out of touch, said AFP.

The New York Post called it a "wacky cult," the conservative Daily Caller dubbed it "The AI Doomsday Cartel," and a White House memo accused it of preferring the saving of "shrimp over families."

Once little known outside the tech world and some academic and political circles, effective altruism (EA) has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after a series of warnings about AI risks.

Those warnings were linked to EA. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and adviser to President Donald Trump, argued that organizations tied to EA are part of a "Doomer Industrial Complex" pushing for tougher AI regulation.

- 'Strange' ideas -

EA is deeply rooted in Silicon Valley and counts controlling AI's dangers among its priorities.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei is considered a key figure in EA's early days, although he now distances himself from the movement.

Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, Dario's sister, is married to Holden Karnofsky, an Anthropic employee and a leading EA proponent.

The movement has also influenced researchers and staff at other AI companies, including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, particularly those working on AI safety.

The movement, which took shape about 15 years ago, is used to criticism.

Wealthy EA donors have often been accused of self-importance and of believing they alone know how best to give.

"Our ideas are just strange enough that people genuinely misinterpret them sometimes, and we can do a better job explaining how effective altruism approaches hard questions and tradeoffs," said Zachary Robinson, head of the Centre for Effective Altruism.

Robinson, whose organization supports the movement without directing it, sees the scrutiny since the summer as an opportunity to open up rather than retreat, because "people are curious to learn about us now."

After growing steadily until 2022, EA was badly damaged by the collapse of cryptocurrency platform FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once the face of EA and later convicted of fraud.

After several difficult years, "We're on an up right now," Robinson said, pointing to attendance at the EA Global conference in New York in mid-October.

Like many at EA Global, Shanil Wijesinghe who works at a Canadian non-profit rejected the image of EA as monolithic. "It is a values-based movement and not an identity-based movement," he said.

"We're all trying to do the most good, with the resources we have," he said. Those values "can be interpreted differently, and I think we have to embrace those differences."

- No leader -

EA has no leader or spokesperson. Sjir Hoeijmakers, head of the charity platform Giving What We Can, said that is a good thing, even if it means "sometimes the story doesn't get told."

Still, "effective altruism is now a movement large enough that it's actually really influencing the world, and that's getting noticed," he said.

"I think the work that they're doing has been quite valuable," said Nadav Brandes, a genetics researcher also at EA Global, referring to AI safety.

"Without those pioneers... nobody would still today take this issue very seriously," he added.

Brandes said he was initially skeptical when AI became a major EA cause, joining climate change and animal welfare.

"It was even a little bit off-putting to me," he recalled. "I was totally wrong about it."

Robinson stressed, however, that EA is about more than AI.

"The cause that gets the most emphasis right now is AI safety, but I think it would be false to say EA is AI safety," he said.

"If you look at the money side of things, actually, it's been the case for many years that global health and development gets much more money than AI," he said.

Technology

Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
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Tech Firms Claw Back Some Losses after Midterms Rout, Eyes on Nvidia

Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File
Nvidia said it was launching an investigation into whether boss Jensen Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot. Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/File

Tech firms rose Monday to claw back some of last week's painful losses fueled by AI regulation worries, though traders were keeping a wary eye on a probe into Nvidia boss Jensen Huang amid claims of an affair with a Chinese spy.

Chipmakers and other companies linked to the artificial intelligence boom took a hammering in the days after Tuesday's US midterms saw Democrats sweep both houses of Congress in a rebuke to Donald Trump and his Republican party.

The results suggested voters were angry at the president's Iran war and tariffs, which have sent prices soaring, as well as a sharp kickback against the huge data center buildout that has taken place across the country in recent years.

That has led to speculation the new Congress will seek to wind in tech firms' construction drive, which could put thousands of jobs at risk.

The uncertainty comes with traders already nervous about when the hundreds of billions of dollars pumped into the sector would actually see a profit.

After taking a lashing on Thursday, Wall Street enjoyed a little stability at the end of last week, and Asia -- which had suffered a hammering itself on Friday -- largely followed suit to start this week.

Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei -- which are heavily weighted with AI-linked tech giants -- led the advances.

The Japanese Nikkei 225 piled on more than three percent thanks to rallies in Kioxia, Tokyo Electron and Advantest, while SK hynix and Samsung piled on around three percent to push the South Korean Kospi sharply higher.

Taiwan's TSMC rocketed nearly six percent to drag the Taiex five percent higher.

There were also healthy gains in Hong Kong and Shanghai, though Sydney, Wellington and Manila edged down.

"Investors will be watching carefully this week to get a sense as to whether these gains are just short-covering, bargain hunting or the beginning of something more sustainable in nature," said Sally Auld at National Australia Bank.

"Fears around AI regulation, the outlook for (capital expenditure) and free cash flow have been the driver of risk reduction in recent weeks and these issues are not likely to be resolved with any conviction in the near term.

"Nonetheless, the valuation of many tech stocks now looks less expensive."

- Nvidia probe -

However, a little more uncertainty was injected into markets with news that Nvidia's board was launching an investigation into whether Huang had been targeted in a foreign espionage plot following his admission that he was unfaithful to his wife.

The New York Times reported last month that US intelligence officials concluded a Chinese executive linked to a Singapore-based data center company called Megaspeed had been funneling information to Beijing.

The executive, Alice Huang -- also known as Huang Le, and no relation to 63-year-old Taiwanese-born Jensen -- developed a close relationship with the Nvidia boss, the Times said.

Nvidia is a global leader in producing chips used to train and run AI models and one of the world's most valuable companies, and last year became the first to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

Jensen Huang is a huge figure in the AI revolution and a close informal adviser to Trump, and the Times said the Nvidia boss's extra-marital relationship could have revealed insights into Trump's thinking around AI.

Technology analyst Dan Ives, at investment bank Yorkville Ives, said the crisis will at the very least spark multiple congressional inquiries and "create an overhang on the stock for a myriad of reasons".

"This will add risk to the stock as he is so important to the Nvidia story and strategy globally," Ives added. "This will also increase major scrutiny regarding selling chips to China, which remains a key battleground issue in DC."

Investors will be keeping tabs this week on the release of fresh US inflation data, after figures Friday showed the economy created far more jobs than expected in October.

The figures will key for the Federal Reserve in determining whether or not to hike interest rates when it meets next in December, with markets saying there is an 80 percent chance of a lift.

Technology

Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
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Pakistan-Built Robots Serve Taste of Future to Karachi Diners

This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)
This photograph taken on October 2, 2026 shows Robia (R) and Jojo (2R), humanoid robot waitresses serving customers at the Sicilian restaurant in Karachi. (AFP)

Wheeling its way between dining booths at a neon-lit restaurant in Pakistan's Karachi megacity, a robot waitress drops off a fresh pizza to an awaiting family.

While global buzz is growing around agile humanoids made in the United States, China and elsewhere, robotic staff are a rare sight in the South Asian country.

"Welcome to Sicilian. My name is Robia," the waitress says in an electronic voice, looking down at diners through blinking red LED eyes.

Robia and her colleague Jojo are the DIY creations of Pakistani engineer Syed Osama Aziz, who is bringing a sci-fi reboot to Karachi's storied dining scene.

They have spherical white heads and dark visors, similar to a motorcycle helmet, and sport black shawls around their neck in the style of a dupatta worn by women in the region.

Aziz, who also established The Sicilian restaurant, developed the machines using mostly locally manufactured parts, designing their circuit boards and programming them in his own lab.

"The equipment, the things needed to make robots, are not so easily available here, so we had to arrange them," he told AFP.

The duo were developed through his robotics company, Cobot, with help from friends and some electronic components imported from abroad.

In China and other East Asian countries especially, robots are an increasingly common sight, shuttling food to customers in chain restaurants and taking on other jobs from cleaning to greeting hotel guests.

But they remain a novelty in Pakistan, where Aziz's home-grown creations are attracting curious diners.

When they arrive at a table, the customers must either take the food off their serving tray themselves or wait for a human member of staff to assist them.

- Excited customers -

Aziz, whose workshop manufacturing the robots is located in Multan in Pakistan's central Punjab province, hopes to make his creations more sophisticated in the future.

"Our plans are to add camera-based processing and image-processing features," he said.

"That means the robot will also recognize you by looking at you, and it will remember what you ordered last time, and accordingly it will be able to give you better suggestions."

For now, the robots are proving a hit with families, who flock to the restaurant to watch the machines in action.

"The best thing about it is that it introduces itself," excited customer Ahmer Zameer told AFP, explaining the robot also "tells you what things you can order".

Children reach out to touch the robots while their parents snap photographs and selfies.

Young customer Sonia Dilosker said she was impressed by the androids' appearance and preferred their approach to serving customers, "because it is a machine and without any emotions".

Restaurant staff say the novelty has brought a surge in customers -- some travelling from across the sprawling port city to meet the robots.

"Our business has grown. People are coming from far away for this. They have seen a robot for the first time here," staff member Hellen told AFP.

"People are excited to see this."