BEIJING — After years of building humanoid robots capable of running, dancing and performing backflips, Chinese companies are pouring resources into a different challenge: developing the AI that could make those machines useful across a wider range of jobs.
The shift is fueling an investment boom in embodied AI, a field focused on software that allows robots to understand their surroundings, learn unfamiliar tasks and adapt without having to be programmed for every job.
Chinese embodied AI companies raised 93.5 billion yuan ($13 billion) across 322 deals in the first half of 2026, five times the amount a year earlier, according to data research firm ITjuzi. Funding is increasingly reaching specialist developers of robot intelligence alongside manufacturers.
As competition drives down hardware prices, robot makers have “concluded that the margin won’t come from the hardware but from the brain,” said Dermot McGrath, founder of Shanghai-based technology consultancy ZenGen Labs.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
