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Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a snapshot of what I'm seeing and hearing from local businesses.
Unitree's founder reminded everyone at the World Robot Conference last week that the biggest challenge for humanoids is learning human skills. AI helps, but is there a secret sauce?
QJ Robots, a startup that's helping robots learn human skills, has been backed by Temasek, founder and CEO Haichuan Gao told me.
The company's AI model focuses on helping robots predict the world around them and perform tasks more efficiently.
QJ Robots claims it's already made more than 100 million yuan ($15 million) from deploying the model to more than 100,000 robots, mostly by companies in mainland China.
That gives the startup a large base from which it collects data every month, Chief Technology Officer Tianren Zhang said. But it's not enough — he said more kinds of data are needed to train the model effectively.
Zhang and CEO Gao both have PhDs in automation from Tsinghua University, where their three-year-old company got its start in the school's brain computing research center.
It's all part of the tech industry's growing focus on world models , which aim to imitate the physical world more closely than ChatGPT-type "large language models" that focus on text generation.
One of Beijing's approaches is to encourage industrial giants to integrate and develop AI capabilities. It's a manufacturing ecosystem edge that local startups are tapping into.
Another Tsinghua alumnus, Chao Yu, launched industrial-focused robotics company Lumos two years ago. Its backers and partners include Mitsubishi Electric.
Lumos has launched its own center for collecting training data. But Yu said that earlier this year, he realized that for factories and other businesses to use more robots effectively, they needed a platform to translate data and AI instruction into task completion. The startup last week officially launched its NexCore system that claims can work with a range of robots, not just those from Lumos.
But the race to build the best autonomous robotics solution is intensifying.
Just one year ago, Ace Robotics launched with SenseTime Co-Founder Wang Xiaogang as the startup's chairman.
An effective humanoid robot solution, he said, must combine hardware, models and data with use-case scenarios. Real-world data is critical, Wang said, as using online videos for training can introduce unrealistic special effects into the model.
Ace Robotics' products include wearable sensors for precisely capturing data from human activity.
It's less clear whether markets will be willing to wait that long. Unitree's shares tumbled after founder Wang Xingxing sought to lower expectations for humanoid commercialization, while the public visiting conference exhibition booths were often bluntly unimpressed.
Dancing robots aside, machines folding clothes or selling water moved slowly and stiffly. One person waiting to buy a bottle of water noted in Mandarin Chinese that people were only patient because it was a robot.
"A human would definitely be scolded if it took this long."
Chinese humanoid robots' biggest obstacle
The impact of U.S. restrictions on foreign-made advanced robotic devices isn't yet that great because few humanoids are being used in the country, said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation.
Pop Mart shares fall as key ex-China sales drop, Citi cuts price target
The Labubu maker said China revenue rose 47.3% for the first six months of the year, helping drive overall sales growth of 23.8% to 17.17 billion yuan ($2.55 billion). But revenue in the Americas fell by 16.5% , while Asia Pacific ex-China saw a 9.7% drop.
Alibaba shares fall 5% as AI spending drives 75% drop in net income
Revenue at the tech giant's key cloud division totaled 48.4 billion yuan, up 45% year-on-year . AI-related product revenue delivered "triple-digit growth for the twelfth consecutive quarter," CEO Eddie Wu said in a Thursday statement.
Aug. 27 - 28: APEC third senior officials plenary meeting in Dalian
Aug. 31: Official manufacturing and services PMI
Sept. 1: RatingDog China General Manufacturing PMI
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