China Makes 85% of the World’s Humanoid Robots—So Why Can’t Anyone Sell Them?

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(SeaPRwire) –

By: Oliver Hawthorne
The biggest paradox in global robotics right now is impossible to miss. China makes 85% of the world’s humanoid robots at low cost and scale, yet the industry faces a sharp demand gap. Startups showcase flashy demos like backflips and coffee pours, but real-world, reliable utility remains out of reach for most use cases. Venture firms and factory operators across the globe are stuck asking how to turn this massive manufacturing capacity into consistent, recurring revenue.

Let’s lay out the hard, verified numbers from industry reports. Barclays data shows Chinese humanoids made up 85% of global shipments last year. Omdia reports 13,000 total humanoid units shipped in 2025. China’s top two firms, AGIBOT and Unitree, each shipped over 5,000 units, while U.S. rivals like Figure AI and Tesla shipped only a few hundred each. Morgan Stanley pegs the total global humanoid market at $5 trillion. China’s 2025 orders hit 2 billion yuan, or $295 million, mostly from state-owned enterprises. There are now 140 Chinese humanoid makers and 330 unique models, per the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The commercial loop here is stuck in a perfect storm of limiting factors. Most current humanoid bots are performative, not built for messy, unpredictable real-world environments. Factories already have specialized robotic arms that handle repetitive tasks without needing humanoid flexibility. Training advanced bots requires massive, varied real-world data, which takes years to collect at scale. Unitree turned a profit last year with 1.7 billion yuan in revenue, but that’s an outlier among early-stage startups. Morgan Stanley expects Chinese humanoid sales to double to 28,000 units this year, while Omdia forecasts 1 million advanced robot shipments by the early 2030s. The only viable near-term path is industrial and logistics use cases, with household chores opening a huge long-term market only if costs drop far enough.

Author bio: Oliver Hawthorne, Principal Correspondent for a leading international tech review, covering advanced manufacturing and robotics.