China's Unitree says "GPT moment" for robots remains years away

Unitree Price War Forces Harmonic Drive Suppliers Out of Comfort Zone: Robot Cost Squeeze Reshapes Supply Chain as Leaderdrive and Competitors Diversify

Price reductions in the humanoid robot market are reshaping the supplier ecosystem, with ripple effects reaching upstream component manufacturers. Unitree Robotics lowered its R1 humanoid robot price from nearly 40,000 yuan to under 30,000 yuan, Songyan reduced its Xiaobu Mi to approximately 9,000 yuan after subsidies, and Xingchen released its T1 cable-driven industrial robot starting at 89,900 yuan. Morgan Stanley responded by raising its 2026…

China's Unitree says "GPT moment" for robots remains years away

Robotics may still be two to five years away from a “GPT moment” comparable with ChatGPT’s breakthrough in generative artificial intelligence, a senior executive at one of the leading Chinese humanoid makers said on July 22. Irving Chen, director for the Asia Pacific and other areas at Unitree Robotics, said large language models (LLMs) had demonstrated their abilities in software but remained poorly connected to robots and machines that need to…