Investment in the production of humanoid robots has soared globally this year, as firms aim to have machines relieve humans in tedious or dangerous tasks. — SCMP
Galbot, a Beijing-based robotics startup backed by the Hong Kong government, aims to take on tech giants in the global humanoid robot market, its co-founder said in an interview.
One year-old Galbot will use Hong Kong as a “window” to introduce its robot to overseas markets, mainly in developed countries and regions where labour costs are relatively high, Galbot co-founder Yao Tengzhou said in an interview with the Post last Friday, after a ceremony marking its partnership with Hong Kong Investment Corp.
That would pit the company against major tech firms who are betting on human-shaped robots to transform industries, including Tesla, which is planning to have “genuinely useful” humanoid robots for internal use next year and production for other companies in 2026, Tesla’s Elon Musk said on Monday.
According to Yao, Galbot is able to compete against tech giants on developing embodied artificial intelligence (AI), physical objects integrated with AI systems to engage with their environments.
The arrival of a new technological wave will level the playing field for small teams and large companies by rendering incumbents’ previously accumulated technological processes less relevant, Yao said.
But competition will be “extremely fierce”, Yao added.
Investment into the production of humanoid robots has soared globally this year amid a generative AI boom, as firms aim to have machines relieve humans in tedious or dangerous tasks amid an ageing population in major countries. A total of 13 start-ups in China raised more than 2.5bil yuan (RM1.60bil or US$344mil) in the first half of this year, according to local industry publication Robot China.
At China’s largest AI conference in Shanghai this month, about 20 humanoid robots developed by local start-ups were on display, while Tesla showcased the Optimus Gen 2 in a glass display box.
Chinese robotics firms are well positioned to take on peers in the US, thanks to the country’s strong hardware supply chain and the vast volume of data, Yao said. Low production costs allow Chinese firms to enter the market quickly and create new iterations of their products at a fast pace, which in turn allows them to collect “a wealth of real-world data from practical scenarios”, according to the co-founder.
“That data could be one major advantage we have when competing with other regions in the future,” he said.
Galbot, established in May 2023, has received investments from major institutions including Chinese on-demand service giant Meituan, venture capital firms Qiming Venture Partners, Lanchi Ventures and IDG capital, as well backing from the HK$62bil (RM39.82bil or US$8bil) Hong Kong government fund last week.
As part of its partnership with the Hong Kong fund, Galbot is looking at an “appropriate” time to set up a local unit in Hong Kong and hire local research and development, business and service teams.
Hong Kong also expects the firm to prioritise the city as its initial public offering destination in the future, but a listing timeline has not been discussed internally as the company is only one year old, Yao said.
Galbot aims to start accepting pre-orders in the second half of this year, and plans to officially deploy its robots in real application scenarios for some early clients towards the end of this year, according to Yao. The firm’s supply chain partners are “relatively optimistic” about the production capacity in the humanoid robot industry, he added. – South China Morning Post
