#humanoid-robots · How Robots Are Reshaping Work

A 21st Century Business Herald report of October 19 details the auto-parts feeding cell Leju Robotics and Zhaofeng launched on October 15: 15 humanoids at a Hangzhou plant, about 1,000 hours logged, 60,000+ parts handled, a 98% feed success rate, one engineer per four robots.

At a State Council briefing on October 19, MIIT's technology director Wei Wei said China's humanoid makers produced more than 40,000 units in the first half, from over 400 models, and that output will pass 100,000 for the year. He also said the ministry will build an industry monitoring system.

On October 13 Korea's trade ministry sandbox committee granted Robros a demonstration exemption to put 20 AI humanoids to work at a chip plant, an auto parts maker, a shipyard and a logistics firm, under conditions set by the labor ministry.

FieldAI has signed a term sheet to raise $700M at a $10B valuation, Business Insider reported on October 2, five times its 2025 value. It sells software that runs humanoids, robot dogs and drones, and reports 30+ customers and $135M in revenue and contracts. The round has not closed.

IDC's first-half 2026 data puts global humanoid shipments at nearly 25,000 units and $740M, with AgiBot first at about 8,600. Frost & Sullivan, a day earlier, counted 36,000 and $540M. IDC says 69% went to research, education, performance and government data centers.

Tesla has taken Optimus from a few dozen units a week in Q2 to several hundred by August, roughly a tenfold jump, The Information reports. None of those units are doing paid work yet, and the hand still needs a redesign Tesla isn't shipping until next year.

UBTech and Kazakhstan's Nero Group announced a $440M robotics localization project on September 25 at the Kazakhstan-China Investment Forum in Almaty: educational robot production starts in October, with service and humanoid robot assembly following in Q2 2027 at a target of 1,000 units a year.

Boston Dynamics opened a permanent Atlas training center at Hyundai's Georgia Metaplant on September 21. The first task is arranging car parts in assembly order. Next year the site grows roughly tenfold, and data collection moves out to aerospace, semiconductor and logistics customers.

Reuters reports the CSRC's informal humanoid-IPO slowdown, first surfaced September 9, has widened: at least six companies including AGIBOT and Deep Robotics are affected, and some issuers could lose 60% to 70% of revenue if local-government-backed orders were stripped out.

At Dongfeng's science and technology innovation week, chief engineer Zhang Zhenlin named the timeline: humanoid robot Xiaodong enters factories in October, with trial production by year-end and a human-parity target for the end of 2027.

At its September 19 「919」 launch, Faraday Future put nine robot configurations on sale through Amazon and RobotShop, led by a $9,990 Master Mini humanoid and a $12,990 security quadruped. The company that spent a decade not shipping cars says its robotics unit now runs a 30% contribution margin.

Toyota named a number on September 18: 400,000 in-house robots across 60 plants worldwide, starting in 2028, at an estimated ¥1 trillion a year. The stated goal isn't fewer workers. It's saving skills held by 18,000 aging takumi that Toyota has no other way to record.