Accelerating Technology Implementation: The Rise of Robotics Commercialization in Beijing

Speeding Up Technological Implementation: Robotics Commercialization Enters the “Beijing Moment”

Beijing Business Daily – January 28, 2023

As we witness the rapid growth of new productive forces and the steady upgrade of industries during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Beijing’s high-quality development is making significant strides. With a robust regional GDP exceeding 52 trillion yuan, the city is embarking on a new journey for the 15th Five-Year Plan. In light of the upcoming 2026 Beijing “Two Sessions,” we are launching a series of special reports titled “Riding the Wave: Beijing’s Leadership in the 15th Five-Year Plan,” focusing on the city’s pioneering explorations and leading practices in technological innovation, industrial advancements, urban governance, and improvements in people’s livelihoods, as well as outlining strategies for high-quality development.

As the Lunar New Year approaches, three robotics companies have announced their collaboration with the 2026 Spring Festival Gala. On January 23, Magic Atom revealed its role as the strategic partner for intelligent robots, followed by Galaxy General Robotics securing the official designation for embodied large model robots on January 25, and Yu Shu Technology announcing its partnership with the gala for the third time on the evening of January 26. The excitement surrounding these technologies reflects substantial breakthroughs in the commercialization of China’s robotics industry.

On January 15, IDC Consulting released a report titled “Top 10 Trends in China’s Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Market for 2026.” The report highlighted that in the humanoid robotics sector, application scenarios are expected to expand more than threefold this year, with the market size estimated to approach $1.3 billion, representing a doubling of growth year-on-year. In the service and consumer robotics field, Chinese manufacturers are projected to account for over 85% of global shipments, acting as the driving force behind market expansion. Additionally, the market growth rate for quadrupedal robots and dexterous hands is anticipated to exceed 100% by 2026, where the former will drive both consumer emotional value and practical value in industry, while the latter will become essential tools for precision tasks. The robots set to appear at the Spring Festival Gala may vary in style, but they collectively illustrate the evolution of China’s robotics industry from technological challenges to large-scale implementation.

Dual Drivers of Technology and Capital

The core of transitioning robotics from labs to market is technological accumulation. Capital investment coupled with feedback from orders creates a virtuous cycle, which is crucial for the rapid scaling of the industry. Beijing’s growth trajectory exemplifies this phenomenon. A company’s robots at the CES in Las Vegas were sold out, with units sold rising from 45 in 2024 to 1,034 in 2025. In December, the company achieved positive operating cash flow for the first time since its establishment. This remarkable growth stems from the team’s long-term technological development in motion control, with relevant technologies validated through various competitions, and in 2025, multiple academic papers were produced in collaboration with universities to enhance product capabilities.

Another notable company, Star Dynamics, showcases the capital’s preference for quality tech enterprises. Established in August 2023 and incubated by Tsinghua University’s Institute of Interdisciplinary Information, it is the only humanoid robotics company with equity held by Tsinghua University. By 2025, the company completed Series A and A+ funding rounds, securing nearly 2 billion yuan in total financing. Well-known investors such as Alibaba, Haier Capital, and Lenovo Venture Capital appear on its list of backers, indicating strong capital interest in high-quality tech firms. The influx of capital is driven by the company’s solid technological foundation. Star Dynamics focuses on integrated research and development of embodied brains and humanoid bodies, achieving over 95% self-research in key hardware components like motors, reducers, and dexterous hands. Its modular design enables rapid product iteration to adapt to diverse industry needs, with humanoid robot products successfully implemented in logistics and service sectors.

The implementation of technology has led to order breakthroughs, which in turn feed back into technological optimization, forming a positive cycle. In its business strategy, the company employs a dual approach of deepening domestic operations while expanding internationally, forging deep collaborations with leading enterprises such as Geely, Renault, SF Express, TCL, Haier, and Lenovo, securing single orders worth nearly 50 million yuan in the logistics sector. Its international business comprises 50% of total operations, covering key markets in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and South Korea, and serving nine out of the top ten tech giants globally. Additionally, it has engaged in cutting-edge collaborations with top academic institutions such as MIT, Stanford, and Tsinghua University, with total order amounts exceeding 500 million yuan.

Angel investor and AI expert Guo Tao stated in an interview that the influx of billion-yuan and thousand-unit orders signifies that the robotics industry has officially entered a phase of scaled commercial implementation. The technology validation stage is essentially complete, and products have successfully transitioned from laboratory settings to real industrial applications, establishing a complete commercial loop that drives demand and delivery, which in turn promotes technological iteration.

From Pilot Applications to Scaled Implementation

With the maturation of technology and product adaptability, commercial robots are gradually shedding their image as “novelty tools.” In the service robotics domain, leading firms have achieved capital breakthroughs and scaled penetration of applications. On October 16, 2025, Beijing Yunji Technology Co., Ltd. went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the first stock of intelligent robotic service agents. This listing process itself is a significant indicator of industry maturity. The Yunji Technology team noted that as a leading company in its sector, they observed a growing pragmatism within the industry in 2025, with clients prioritizing actual value and operational efficiency over mere conceptual allure. For instance, in the hotel sector, robotic services have transitioned from being an added experience to becoming a standard industry configuration, effectively reducing labor costs and directly enhancing operational data through increased service efficiency. By May 2025, Yunji’s robots were deployed in over 34,000 hotels and 150 hospitals globally, successfully expanding into diverse environments such as factories and supermarkets, demonstrating significant progress in global operations.

From a performance perspective, the company reported total revenue of 88.32 million yuan in the first five months of 2025, marking an 18.9% year-on-year increase. Revenue from hotel operations rose by 20%, maintaining steady growth, while medical and factory sectors saw even more remarkable growth rates of 12.6% and 86.9%, respectively. Notably, revenue from Yunji’s self-developed HDOS intelligent system increased by 194% year-on-year, indicating the gradual formation of a secondary growth curve and infusing more momentum into the company’s development.

In the culinary sector, the commercialization process of robots is also accelerating, transitioning from technological validation to essential configuration. The Xianglu Robot, which focuses on smart cooking robots combined with recipe software and intelligent kitchen management systems, has helped food businesses standardize operations. Previously a leader in the non-group meal category for smart cooking robot shipments, Xianglu holds significant sway in the market. The company revealed that by 2025, its cooking robots have shifted from trial usage to essential configurations for food businesses, with customers focusing on practical operational issues such as taste consistency, return on investment, and ease of use. To meet market demands, Xianglu has continued to optimize its technology, significantly enhancing the consistency of its food products through upgraded temperature control and ingredient dispensing systems, achieving a temperature control precision of ±1°C and maintaining ingredient dispensing errors within 1 gram for 80 types of Chinese seasonings. Furthermore, its digital recipe library has expanded to over 1 million dishes, effectively catering to various culinary needs. Currently, Xianglu’s equipment has been implemented in over 30 scenarios, covering Chinese fast food, formal dining, school cafeterias, and elderly meals. Thanks to its exceptional product quality and adaptability, Xianglu’s shipment volume in 2025 reached three times that of the previous year, successfully ranking first in global sales in its category.

Senior business management expert and economist Dong Peng analyzed in an interview that the order structure for robotics in 2025 is dominated by assembly lines, logistics, and precision manufacturing, reflecting a trend of demand penetrating into higher-value segments and demonstrating the widespread recognition of the practical value of robotics in industrial settings.

Policy and Ecological Advancements

The rapid commercialization of robotics and embodied intelligence is supported by collaborative policies at both national and local levels. As the robotics industry steps into a deeper phase of commercial models and supply chain upgrades, the competition is shifting from solely technical rivalries to comprehensive ecological capabilities. On the policy front, a full-cycle support network is continually improving. At the national level, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s “Guiding Opinions on the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots” sets clear goals: to establish an innovation system and achieve mass production and application demonstration by 2025, and to create a reliable industrial and supply chain system by 2027. Multi-departmental joint plans propose to double the density of manufacturing robots by 2025 compared to 2020, and to promote over 200 typical application scenarios in ten key sectors.

Beijing focuses on precise empowerment and ecological cultivation, introducing special action plans with the goal of overcoming 100 key technologies and nurturing 50 core enterprises by 2027, aiming to establish a trillion-yuan industrial cluster. The Beijing Economic Development Zone has launched several support measures, including rewards for benchmark training venues, annual data vouchers worth 100 million yuan, and subsidies of up to 1 million yuan for core components, while also exploring financial innovation to reduce companies’ R&D and operational costs and providing a professional testing environment to facilitate technological implementation. An Guangyong, from the All-China Mergers and Acquisitions Association, noted that the accelerated commercialization of the industry in 2025 benefits from policy support as well as macroeconomic drivers, with the demand for cost reduction and efficiency enhancement in manufacturing, alongside geopolitical factors, accelerating the self-research of core technologies and the localization of the supply chain.

As business models and supply chains evolve simultaneously, the perspective of market and customer needs indicates that the core technology of robotic bodies is no longer the sole barrier. Instead, comprehensive capabilities are likely to become the competitive core of robotics companies in the next stage. In the humanoid robotics sector, rental and subscription models are emerging, lowering customer entry barriers while realizing long-term value. Leading service robot companies are building national warehousing, after-sales, and training systems to strengthen support for scaled implementation. The demand for mass production is driving the supply chain to upgrade towards efficient collaboration and self-control, with increasing localization rates of core components and the widespread adoption of modular design being key directions. The IDC report indicates that the boundaries of robotics applications are continually expanding, with multi-form collaborative operations becoming the norm; by 2026, 60% of medium to large projects will employ two or more forms of robots working together.

Yuan Shuai from the China Urban Development Research Institute stated that investors are increasingly favoring companies with well-validated scenarios and scalable production potential. The future of technology value transformation and service system construction will be crucial for companies to establish themselves and for the industry to enter a phase of value realization.

Reporter’s Note

The robotics industry has entered a new year filled with musical notes, marathons, and vibrant exhibitions at CES 2025, where a mini dexterous hand the size of a woman’s palm plays piano keys with six active degrees of freedom supporting smooth chord transitions. The atmosphere at the event, along with the presence of robots at the Yizhuang Half Marathon and the Spring Festival Gala, illustrates the accelerated trajectory of the robotics industry throughout the year. Analysts highlight that 2025 is a critical turning point for the robotics industry, with embodied intelligence emerging as the universal technological foundation for the next generation of robots. This transformation will drive the industry through two major shifts: from display-driven innovation to value verification, and from single-unit intelligence to system-level collaboration. The various applications of robots across different scenarios signify a breakthrough from laboratory technology to real industrial cycles. In this year, the influx of billion-yuan and thousand-unit orders reflects the solid growth of China’s service and consumer robots in global shipments, while multi-form collaborative robotic operations are gradually becoming widespread in medium to large projects, tightening the connection between technology and commercialization. Over the course of 365 days, the Chinese robotics industry has successfully established a complete loop from technology to application and then to commercialization. This year’s accumulation not only strengthens the foundation for the localization of core components and the improvement of supply chain efficiency but also positions China’s robotics industry as a leader on the global stage with a solid footing in both technology and commercialization.