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HONG KONG \u2014 Chinese-made humanoid robots are making waves<\/a> with their ability to do backflips, direct traffic, and even make coffee as the companies developing them seek ways to expand and dominate the market.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Robot makers in China say they have thousands of orders from both the government and private businesses for humanoids that can do such things as sort parcels at postal centers, as the country finds ways to cope with an aging population and rising labor costs. However, some experts believe demand for humanoids lags the capacity to build them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n China and the United States dominate research for what Morgan Stanley estimates is a $5 trillion humanoid robots market<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By some measures, the U.S. holds an upper hand in developing the artificial intelligence for such robots’ high-level computing power, or \u201cbrains.\u201d But as the world’s factory floor, China leads in mass production capacity, supplies of hardware and harvesting of data for training robots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Shanghai-based startup Matrix Robotics makes humanoid robots that employ AI. Its flagship humanoid robot, the \u201cMATRIX-3,\u201d stands nearly 5.6 feet tall and is equipped with hands able to make finely controlled movements. They are priced at around $99,000 per unit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Customers for the roughly 1,000 orders it has received include coffee chains and hotels, its founder and CEO Allan Zhang, who formerly worked for Tesla, said at a recent robotics expo in Macao.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So far, Matrix has made only a few hundred of the robots, though it said it will be capable of delivering 5,000 units within this year, depending on the number of orders.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n EngineAI, a startup based in southern China\u2019s Shenzhen, says its full-sized humanoid robots could be used as security guards and museum guides. They also perform, with dancing and boxing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A basic edition of its humanoid costs 180,000 yuan . \u201cThe next step will be to move into more real-life scenarios,\u201d said Issac Li, EngineAI’s head of brand and marketing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most humanoid robots are still performative rather than functional, falling short of working in messy, unpredictable environments, said Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at the New America think tank focused on Chinese technology.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe use cases of these robots are still so limited,\u201d said Chibo Tang of the venture capital firm Gobi Partners, which invests in technology startups including robotics companies. \u201cWithout the demand and without that scale from the market, these companies are not able to really go into mass production.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n China had more than 140 humanoid robot manufacturers and more than 330 models in 2025, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Last year, the Chinese government even publicly warned about the risk of a bubble in the industry given the lagging state of commercialization and applications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Corporate and academic labs are buying humanoid robots for research. And in China, many of the more than 2 billion yuan worth of orders in 2025 came from state-owned enterprises for use in places such as power plants, data centers or for entertainment, Morgan Stanley said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe economics are tough: humanoid robots remain expensive to produce, fragile in operation, and dependent on highly structured environments to function,\u201d Sacks explained. There’s \u201ca long way to go to get to a level of functionality where people will actually feel comfortable having them in their homes providing care for elderly or children,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The more viable commercial path will more likely be through industrial and logistics settings, Sacks said. But many factories in China and elsewhere already are equipped with non-humanoid robotic arms that perform repetitive single functions and may not need many humanoid robots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Japan and in the U.S., humanoid robot startups are also struggling to find buyers in<\/a> industrial and other work settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Yet over the past year, real-world deployment of humanoid robots in China has accelerated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Chinese people are relatively \u201cused to this rapid change in terms of technology,\u201d said Ye Tian, an ex-Apple engineer and founder and CEO of the Chinese startup RoboScience, which focuses on developing the systems behind AI-powered robots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As the technology matures, humanoids could perform heavy-lifting and mundane tasks in warehouses, factories and ports, said Lian Jye Su, with the technology research group Omdia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Humanoid robots also can fill in gaps where work is dangerous or repetitive, Matrix’s Zhang said. There’s also a \u201cvery large household market\u201d for handling chores in hundreds of millions of homes in China<\/a>, he believes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Beijing, freelance social media content creator Yang Ning recently tried out a cleaning service with a helper robot with mechanical arms and hands. It can do simple tasks like organizing shoes, folding clothes and changing garbage bags, but it’s accompanied by a human cleaner.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n