On September 29, IDC put numbers on the first half of 2026 for humanoid robots: nearly 25,000 units shipped worldwide, up 432.1% on the same half of 2025, with China at more than 19,000 of them, or 77.9%. Revenue came to $740M, up 322.7%, according to Forbes’s read of the data. A day earlier we covered a different report on the same six months that said 36,000 units. The gap is 11,000 robots.
Two censuses of one half-year
Frost & Sullivan counted 36,000 units and $540M. IDC counts about 25,000 and $740M. Divide revenue by units and the two reports are describing different markets: about $15,000 a robot in Frost’s, about $30,000 in IDC’s, which IDC reportedly puts down from $37,000 a year earlier. Our divisions, not figures either firm published as a price.
Vendor rankings disagree too. Frost had UBTech first on 16,123 units. IDC puts AgiBot first at more than 8,600, a 35% share and over 45% of China. UBTech’s Frost number alone would be about 65% of IDC’s entire global total. Neither report’s full text is public, so we cannot say whether the gap is scope, a definition of 「shipped」, or related-party sales. What both agree on is direction: volume at multiples of last year, led by Chinese vendors. Forbes’s summary of the IDC data says Chinese vendors built more than 95% of units, with Chinese buyers taking about 78%.
Behind AgiBot, Forbes reports Unitree at roughly 5,000 units and Booster Robotics at roughly 1,000. AgiBot is also one of the companies named in our September 20 piece on the CSRC’s IPO slowdown. The volume leader here is a listing candidate whose regulators are asking how much of its revenue comes from state-backed buyers.
Where the 25,000 went
The line that matters is the application split. IDC says research and education, performances and exhibitions, and government data centers together took 69% of H1 shipments, down from 83.8% a year earlier. That is about 17,200 of roughly 25,000 units sitting in labs, classrooms, stages and showrooms.
The remaining 31%, about 7,700 units, covers factories, logistics, retail and commercial service. Back out last year’s base from the 432.1% growth rate and that bucket was roughly 760 units in H1 2025. It grew about tenfold in a year. These are our derived figures, resting on IDC’s percentages as reported.
The 31% is not all factory work. The reference deployments in IDC’s write-up, as reported in Chinese media, are a theme park with more than 300 AgiBot robots and a retail chain with 100. Frost’s narrower production-work count was 1,200 units. Put the two together and production-line humanoids are probably a small fraction of that 7,700, with the rest in guiding, greeting and shop-floor roles.
Price is the second disagreement
Take the $30,000 at face value for a moment. It is below the $65,000 we backed out for Frost’s production-work robots and above the $15,000 Frost’s all-in average implies. A market where the average robot costs $30,000 and 69% of units go to demonstration and teaching is not a market that has found its factory buyer. It is one where institutions, often with government money behind them, are buying capacity ahead of use. That is the same pattern behind the CSRC’s concern, and it sits beside what we wrote on Unitree’s listing, where the share price ran a full round trip while the robot count did not move.
The price decline matters in the other direction. A fall from about $37,000 to about $30,000 in a year, if IDC’s figures hold, is roughly 19%. Cheaper units widen the set of buyers who can justify a pilot, and pilots are what move a robot out of the 69% bucket.
What the numbers say about jobs
Start with the forecast. IDC raised its 2030 figure to more than 750,000 units a year. Annualise H1 at about 50,000 and that is a 15-fold rise in four years, roughly a doubling every year. We would not plan around it. On September 25 we reported that Tesla was building several hundred Optimus a week with none doing paid work, which is the supply-side version of the same caveat.
For job categories, the exposed work today is not welding or assembly. It is the front-of-house: venue guides, exhibition hosts, retail floor assistants, and demonstration staff, where one robot per site is a visible swap and a price near $30,000 begins to look like a salary line. Factory material handling remains the next tier, and Frost’s 1,200 units say it has barely started.
Two readings to track. First, the share of shipments outside research, education, performance and data centers. It moved from 16% to 31% in a year; another jump to 45% or more in the next half-year would mean buyers are paying for work, not for display. Second, price. If the average falls from $30,000 toward $20,000 while that share rises, the cost case is arriving with the volume.
Sources
- TechNode: China accounts for 77.9% of global humanoid shipments in H1, IDC says (Sept 29)
- Yicai: Chinese vendors above 70% of global shipments, AgiBot ahead of Unitree (Sept 30)
- Pedaily: IDC report, AgiBot’s lead in shipments and revenue
- John Koetsier / Forbes: Humanoid shipments jump 432%, China has 95% market share (Oct 1)
