A glimpse into robotics in China...
and what the rest of the world can learn from them. My experiences talking to a large contingent from China at the Humanoids Summit 2025
One of the striking differences at the Humanoids Summit that was hosted last week compared the one in 2024 was the large presence of startups from China. Speakers mostly converged on two narratives:
(1) China has a superiority in humanoid manufacturing owing to its traditional strength in industrial manufacturing, tens of startups building humanoids, and the ability to scale production quickly.
(2) The US has a lead in the robotics brain with multiple robotics foundation models built by extremely well funded startups such as SkildAI and Physical Intelligence.
Creating a robust ecosystem of humanoid robots which can succeed at societal tasks and provide true economic value to humans will need a marriage between the two, and hence a healthy competition and collaboration between the United States and China is the need of the hour.
