In March, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang appeared on stage at an industry conference alongside a robotic version of Olaf, the Disney snowman character, to demonstrate where physical artificial intelligence is headed. The robot brought together three American technology companies, ran on Nvidia chips, and was designed to show off U.S. innovation. What the demo did not emphasize was the origin of the mechanical components that made it move. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation published this week, the gears, sensors, and actuators inside many of the most prominent American humanoid robots are made in China.
That dependency is now forcing a question American policymakers have not fully answered: what does it mean to lead in robotics if the physical substrate of those robots is manufactured by a strategic competitor?
What China Actually Controls
The robotics supply chain is not like semiconductors, where the chokepoints are well known and export controls are already in place. It is a set of lower-profile industrial components that rarely make headlines but are essential to every robot that walks, reaches, or grasps.
According to Time magazine's April 2026 analysis of the global physical AI race, China is the world leader in lidar sensors, with an estimated 70% of the global market. Lidar is a key sensing technology that allows robots and autonomous vehicles to map their surroundings in three dimensions. Suzhou-based Leaderdrive has rapidly become one of the world's biggest producers of harmonic reducers, the precision gears that are critical to robot joint movement and dexterity. Eyou Robot Technology has opened what it describes as the world's first automated production line for humanoid robot joints in Shanghai. Chinese companies including ESTUN and Inovance are emerging as dominant players in controllers, the software-linked hardware modules that function as a robot's central nervous system.
Time's analysis found that hardware costs in robotics have more than halved as China achieved manufacturing scale in adjacent industries, particularly electric vehicles. The actuators, sensors, and batteries used in EVs overlap substantially with those used in robots, meaning China's EV dominance provided a cost and scale foundation that its robotics industry is now exploiting.
In 2025, China accounted for over 80% of global humanoid robot installations and more than half of the world's industrial robots, according to Time.
The Unitree Numbers
The most detailed public picture of the Chinese humanoid robot industry comes from a company filing that has received limited attention in the American press. Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics, which became the world's top humanoid robot seller by volume in 2025, filed for an initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 20. The filing seeks to raise 4.2 billion yuan, equivalent to approximately $610 million, according to Rest of World's reporting on the prospectus.
The numbers in that 363-page document are striking. Unitree sold 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, accounting for roughly one third of global humanoid sales, according to Rest of World. Its revenue surged to 1.71 billion yuan, approximately $250 million, in 2025, up from 392 million yuan, approximately $57 million, in 2024. The company posted an adjusted net profit of 600 million yuan, approximately $90 million, in 2025, a 674.3% increase from 2024, its first full profitable year.
The average price of a Unitree humanoid robot has also collapsed. In 2023, the average selling price was approximately 593,400 yuan, or about $85,000. By 2025, that had fallen to approximately 167,600 yuan, or about $25,000. The company's gross margin improved to nearly 60% even as prices fell, because Unitree self-develops and manufactures its core components, a vertical integration strategy that gives it structural cost advantages over Western competitors.
Unitree's five-year plan, filed with the prospectus, calls for producing 75,000 humanoid robots and 115,000 quadruped robots annually. That scale would represent a transformation of the industry from a research and demonstration market to a mass production one. For context, Elon Musk has said Tesla's Optimus robots would not be available for retail sale until at least 2027, at a target price of around $20,000.
A Factory That Makes One Robot Every 30 Minutes
Unitree is not the only Chinese company scaling fast. On March 29, a new high-capacity humanoid robot production facility in Guangdong province officially began operations. The facility, a joint venture between Leju Robotics and Dongfang Precision Science and Technology, is described as China's first capable of producing up to 10,000 humanoid robots annually, according to Interesting Engineering.
The factory integrates 24 precision assembly stages and 77 inspection checkpoints. Each completed humanoid robot comes off the line approximately every 30 minutes, which the companies say represents a roughly 50% improvement in efficiency compared to traditional assembly methods. The production line is also designed to be flexible, capable of switching between robot models without requiring a full manufacturing overhaul, using automated guided vehicles and digital control systems.
Before leaving the production line, each robot undergoes 41 simulated work condition tests. Agibot, another Chinese competitor, has already announced the rollout of its 10,000th humanoid robot. UBTECH Robotics is working toward producing 5,000 units annually and has set a goal of bringing cost per unit below $20,000.
The competitive landscape among Chinese companies is also undergoing consolidation pressure. Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint Research, told Rest of World that there are currently more than 100 humanoid robot companies in China. He said that number is likely to decrease to a few dozen as IPOs proceed and capital separates viable businesses from well-funded experiments.
Congress Responds: The American Security Robotics Act
On March 26, Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Chuck Schumer of New York announced plans to introduce the American Security Robotics Act, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit the federal government from buying or using unmanned ground vehicle systems produced by firms under the jurisdiction of a foreign adversary, primarily China, according to Reuters.
The bill would apply to humanoid robots and wheeled or tracked unmanned ground systems. It would also bar the use of federal funds in connection with such robots. A companion bill in the House of Representatives was announced by Representative Elise Stefanik of New York on the same day.
In a statement, Cotton said robots made by the Chinese government pose threats to privacy and national security. Schumer argued that Chinese firms with backing from the Chinese Communist Party are running what he described as their standard playbook, attempting to flood the U.S. market with technology that presents security risks to Americans' privacy and U.S. industry.
The stated concern is dual. Senators in the bill's announcement argued that Chinese robots could be used to gather data and transmit it back to China, and that the robots could potentially be remotely controlled from China. The bill includes exemptions allowing U.S. military and law enforcement agencies to acquire Chinese robots for research purposes, provided the robots cannot transmit data to or receive data from Chinese networks.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, in a March 27 analysis of the legislation, noted that Chinese firms have relied on supply chains developed for electric vehicles and drones and are supported by state investment. The FDD analysis found that Chinese firms remain early leaders in humanoid robots despite limitations in domestically sourcing components such as advanced semiconductors, which remain subject to U.S. export controls.
The Deeper Problem: Components, Not Just Finished Robots
The American Security Robotics Act, if passed, would address one dimension of the problem: Chinese-branded robots in federal facilities. It would not address the broader question of Chinese components inside American-branded robots.
The Wall Street Journal's reporting found that American humanoid robots from companies backed by major U.S. investors and built to U.S. specifications rely on Chinese-made components inside their frames. The Nvidia demo robot was specifically cited as bringing together American technology brands while depending on Chinese-sourced physical parts.
This dynamic mirrors what happened in the drone industry. DJI, a Chinese company, dominated the global consumer drone market so thoroughly that U.S. military and government procurement bans were enacted. But American companies that sought to build alternatives found themselves sourcing motors, sensors, and controllers from the same Chinese manufacturers that supply DJI. The ban addressed the finished product, not the component supply.
A similar pattern is playing out in humanoid robotics. China controls an estimated 70% of the global lidar market, is the dominant source of harmonic reducers, and is scaling actuator and controller production at a rate that American suppliers are not currently matching. Time's analysis concluded that whichever country deploys robots faster will collect more real-world operational data, and that data advantage will translate into better training for future AI models running those robots. China, with over 80% of 2025 humanoid robot installations, is currently generating that data at a pace the United States is not.
The Scale Gap Is Growing
The Guardian's March analysis of China's robotics revolution framed the competitive situation directly: a plausible near-term outcome is one where the United States leads in the software and AI model layer of humanoid robots while China supplies the physical hardware at scale. American companies may eventually produce general-purpose humanoids capable of a wide range of tasks. But China is building lower-cost, specialized robots faster and at higher volume.
The Guardian analysis noted that Chinese companies are already offering entry-level humanoids for home use at prices as low as $1,400. Noetix's Bumi, described as a family companion and education robot, was among the products cited. The mass-market deployment of lower-capability humanoids at those prices generates training data that improves higher-capability systems over time.
Chinese cities including Beijing, Wuhan, and Shanghai are also operating training sites for robots, facilities that simulate retail environments, elderly care settings, and smart homes in order to harvest standardized operational data. That investment in data infrastructure is, by design, building a training moat around Chinese robotics the same way American companies built moats around large language models through data-at-scale strategies.
What the IPO Filing Reveals About Vulnerabilities
Unitree's own IPO prospectus includes an acknowledgment that its supply chain is not entirely immune to geopolitical pressure. The company noted in filings, as reported by Rest of World, that it is wary of uncertainties surrounding trade policies and geopolitics affecting the raw materials it imports, which currently make up around 20% of its supply chain. The company's self-manufactured component base gives it substantial insulation, but not complete immunity.
That 20% import reliance is notable for a company whose competitive advantage is vertical integration. The remaining 80% of Unitree's supply chain is domestic. For American humanoid robot manufacturers, the ratio is often inverted, with critical physical components sourced from China and software and AI models developed domestically.
The American Security Robotics Act is a real response to a real problem. But as written, it addresses the visible layer of the supply chain challenge while the deeper layer of component dependency goes unaddressed. Senators Cotton and Schumer introduced a DJI-style prohibition. The harder policy question is whether the United States can build, fund, and scale a domestic humanoid robot component industry in time to matter.
China now controls the physical layer of the robotics industry: the lidar, the actuators, the gears, and increasingly the factories that assemble them at scale. American companies lead in chips and AI models. The robot itself is increasingly a Chinese product with an American brain. Whether that division holds, and who captures the economic value from it, is one of the defining industrial competitions of the decade.