In January, Donald Trump announced from the White House that he was launching “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history,” and that “it’s all taking place right here in America.” Stargate Project, a $500 billion initiative to bolster the development of AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, is designed to keep the US ahead of the “great competition” in the global AI race, which the president called perhaps the most consequential battle for the future of humanity.
What Trump didn’t mention was that while Stargate would help America vie for supremacy over AI’s digital brain, the next major AI race had already begun, for its physical body. And China is leaps and bounds ahead.
A little over a week later, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, the 2025 Spring Festival Gala in Beijing was broadcast throughout China and in dozens of languages across the world. As the centerpiece of the annual blowout, a troupe of 16 AI-powered humanoid robots developed by the Chinese firm Unitree danced sprightfully, in time, with elaborate choreography set to traditional folk music alongside professional human dancers. Humanoid robots prancing across a stage is not itself the future. But China was sending a signal to the world that it wants to lead a future filled with increasingly dexterous robots.
JPMorgan forecasts a total addressable market of 5 billion humanoid robots in the coming years. Elon Musk has made even bolder predictions. By 2040 there will be at least 10 billion humanoids, outnumbering humans, he says, and Tesla’s robot, Optimus, will be at the forefront of that future. “Optimus will be the biggest product of all time by far,” Musk said last month. “Nothing will even be close. I think it will be 10 times bigger than the next biggest product ever made.” In various capacities, humanoids will work alongside, or in place of, humans to allow 24/7 production. They will be personal butlers and concierges in homes. They will be waiters in restaurants.
Whatever the eventual shape of humanoids in human society, China is poised to mold it. In the past five years, the country has successfully applied for 5,590 patents mentioning humanoid robots, to the United States’ 1,442, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley. Over that stretch, China has secured 22% more robotics patents than the world’s 19 next most productive countries combined. China has rolled out more industrial robots into factories than every other country combined since at least 2021, according to the International Federation of Robotics. In 2024, Chinese companies brought 35 humanoids to market, two-thirds of the global total. Companies in the US and Canada released a combined total of eight.
In “America Is Missing the New Labor Economy,” a lengthy report released in March, the research firm SemiAnalysis predicted that humanoids would soon reshape the global economy. “We are in the early precipice of a nonlinear transformation in industrial society,” the authors wrote, adding that “the only country that is positioned to capture this level of automation is China.” Unless the United States dramatically ramps up its robot capacity, the report warned, falling further behind represents “an existential threat to the US as it is outcompeted in all capacities.”
“China has positioned itself quite effectively to be set to dominate the robotics sector and the robotics supply chain,” William Matthews, a senior research fellow for China and the world at the international affairs think tank Chatham House, tells me. And as the robotics sector grows, he says, “what you’re looking at potentially is an Industrial Revolution-like shift in the balance of power.”
Not every robotics researcher and manufacturer I spoke with cast the competition in such dire terms. But each said China had several key advantages, including heavy government support, world-leading research, and, crucially, supply chain prowess.
What you’re looking at potentially is an Industrial Revolution-like shift in the balance of power.
William Matthews, a senior research fellow at Chatham House
Starting at about the time of ChatGPT’s debut in late 2022, advances in generative AI have dramatically improved robots’ ability to “think” quickly and interact with their environments. Local and national governments have since invested heavily in humanoid development throughout China. In 2023, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a policy document to steer development of the humanoid sector, calling it “a new frontier in technological competition.” That same year, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen also unveiled policies supporting humanoid robot development, including catalyzing the use of the technology and streamlining the humanoid manufacturing supply chain. Several other provinces have followed suit in recent months. All told, local governments have invested more than $10 billion in the development of humanoids in the past three years.
It also helps that China is the world’s factory. “China makes more stuff than anyone else. Their capacity dwarfs that even of the United States,” says Matthews. “What you’ve got in China is a third of global manufacturing output, increasingly producing very high-quality manufactured goods, plus the rollout of AI systems, plus a highly sophisticated robotics industry and a huge amount of investment in it. That gives China a huge advantage.”
For one, the supply advantage makes it easier to build cheaper. Unitree, for example, recently announced its latest humanoid, G1, which stands 4-foot-2, can walk at 4 ½ mph, and carry 7 pounds in its hands for up to two hours, would start at $16,000. “From a price point perspective,” says Jonathan Aitken, a robotics expert at the University of Sheffield, “this is incredible.” Musk has said Optimus, which he plans to begin selling in 2026, will cost $20,000 to $30,000. (Agility Robotics, Boston Dynamics, and Figure AI, three major US manufacturers of humanoid robots, did not respond to requests for comment.)
“The market foundation is very strong here in China,” says Michael Tam, the chief brand officer at UBTech, a major Chinese humanoid robot manufacturer. “The Chinese economy has developed quite a lot via industrial robots in the last 30 years.” UBTech has several humanoids in the works, including Tien Kung Xingzhe, a 5-foot-6 biped said to be able to stride at more than 6 mph and traverse sand, snow, and stairs (preorders for the $41,000 humanoid began in March). Another, the Walker S2, is under development and is expected to be deployed in car manufacturers and logistics firms, among other industrial settings. UBTech is targeting mass production of its humanoids by 2026, according to the South China Morning Post.
Supply chain supremacy also means China’s competitors across the world are heavily reliant on China. Like the humans they’re designed to serve and replace, humanoids are made up of thousands of parts. There’s the “brain,” which includes semiconductors, foundational generative AI models, and vision software. The United States has a clear advantage in the brain game. Per a February analysis from Morgan Stanley, 13 of 22 companies working on humanoid brain parts are based in America (including Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir), and only two are based in China.
But the investment bank estimates that only about 4% of the total cost of manufacturing a humanoid comes from the brain. The overwhelming majority is spent on the body — a range of actuators, pistons, and skeletal parts. Twenty-one of 64 companies building body parts for humanoids are based in China; 17 are in the US. All told, about 56% of the world’s humanoid supply chain companies are based in China. In particular, China has the corner market on an advanced and costly type of ball screw known as the planetary roller screw — which is essential to most of today’s cutting-edge humanoids. Trump’s tariffs on China, which have now reached 145%, are likely to push up the bill of materials for the average robot for many manufacturers.
It’s still very early days in the humanoid industry, and how widely humans will embrace working alongside or being replaced by their machine counterparts is far from certain. But the state of the race is clear. “Unless serious and massive action is taken soon in the United States, in Europe, in Japan and South Korea,” says Matthews, “it’ll be very hard to compete with China in the long run.” For now, the war over robots is China’s to lose.
Chris Stokel-Walker is a journalist who focuses on the tech sector and its impact on our daily lives. He is the author of “How AI Ate the World,” published in 2024, as well as “TikTok Boom,” “YouTubers,” and “The History of the Internet in Byte-Sized Chunks.” Alongside his reporting, he teaches journalism at Newcastle University.
Correction: April 14, 2025 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of UBTech’s chief brand officer. He is Michael Tam, not Michael Tan.
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