CNBC's The China Connection newsletter: China ships more humanoid robots than the U.S. as investors diverge on AI bets

Chinese startups are churning out more humanoid robots than their U.S. rivals, despite far lower valuations.

Apr 21, 2026 - 05:17

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A staff member trains a humanoid robot to replicate human behavior at a training center in Hefei, Anhui province of China, on April 13, 2026.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a succinct snapshot of what I'm seeing and hearing from local businesses.

Today, I dig into rising valuations for Chinese humanoid startups and why they still aren't attracting the same kind of money as their U.S. rivals — despite delivering far more robots. Are U.S. VCs missing out?

The big story

Chinese humanoid startups are already shipping robots to factories and malls, while their U.S. rivals remain focused on development — and far higher valuations.

It's a growing divide.

U.S. humanoid robot startup Figure commands a valuation of at least $39 billion; Texas-based rival Apptronik, meanwhile, achieved a $5 billion valuation in February.

That's well above the $3 billion-plus valuation of Chinese startup Galbot, which claims to be the highest-valued privately-held Chinese company in the sector. And its backers come from China, Singapore and the Middle East — not the U.S.

Among private companies — and there are well over 100 humanoid startups in China — AI2 Robotics has achieved a 20 billion yuan ($2.93 billion) valuation, according to CEO and founder Eric Guo.

It might be a fraction of Figure's valuation, but Guo claimed a large, foreign high-end manufacturer chose AI2's robots over the U.S. startup's for factory work. AI2 is also rolling out robots at airports in China, as well as in semiconductor and healthcare factories.

"Commercialization and tech capability aren't contradictory," Guo said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

It's an investment thesis he expects investors — even from the U.S. — to start picking up on in just a few months.

If that shift happens, China is well-positioned.

Chinese humanoid startups took the top six spots in Omdia's rankings of global robot shipments in 2025. Figure and Tesla were the only U.S. companies that made the top 10. While a Figure robot appeared beside U.S. first lady Melania Trump at a White House event in March, Tesla's Optimus still largely remains in development.

Another reason for the valuation gap is how investors perceive the companies and their ambitions.

U.S. humanoid startups are being priced as wide-reaching artificial intelligence platforms, while Chinese ones are seen more as industrial hardware plays, said Rui Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China, which regularly brings U.S. investors to visit Chinese startups.

"If China ends up dominating manufacturing scale and real-world deployment," U.S. venture capital funds may miss out on the opportunity to some degree, she said.

Playing both sides

Geopolitics has complicated the investment landscape.

U.S.-China tensions, along with domestic national security policies, have chilled cross-border investment. Large U.S. pension funds that once invested heavily in Chinese startups via venture capital funds have reduced their exposure in the wake of greater regulatory scrutiny on both sides.

That has created an opportunity for Middle East funds. They have backed Chinese venture capital and bought locally developed robots as Gulf countries look to transition away from fossil fuels.

They "seem able to play both sides more flexibly," Tech Buzz's Ma said, adding that "they may end up with the most balanced exposure to the humanoid opportunity."

Limx Dynamics, whose backers include China-based Future Capital, got its first foreign investor this year in the form of Dubai-based Stone Venture.

"Roughly 90% of U.S. venture capital flows into software, for example, leaving a critical financing gap in hard tech that sovereign funds are uniquely positioned to fill," said Winston Ma, adjunct professor of law at the New York University School of Law.

He added that China's experience with electric car and drone manufacturing is now translating into humanoid production.

Future Capital, whose early investments included EV company Li Auto, recently announced that another of its portfolio companies, sports robot company Pongbot, had raised almost 200 million yuan in less than six months.

It's a sign of how quickly the money is coming in, even if it's at a fraction of the U.S. level.

Diverging trajectories also flip the script for investors, according to Cameron Johnson, Shanghai-based senior partner at supply chain consulting firm Tidalwave Solutions. He says Americans are coming to Shenzhen to buy humanoid robot parts — and combine them with U.S. software.

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