The future of robotics forged in Shanghai
Imagine a factory floor teeming with thousands of human-like robots, each learning from our movements, about our tasks, about our very essence. This vision is rapidly becoming reality in Shanghai, where AgiBot, a startup led by a former Huawei prodigy, is poised to unleash a wave of advanced humanoid robots into the world, fueled by a new AI model that promises to redefine robotics.
With the general-purpose robot model Genie Operator-1 (GO-1), the company anticipates "several times" revenue growth in 2025 and plans to produce "several thousand" humanoid robots this year, said Yao Maoqing, AgiBot's partner and president of its Embodied Intelligence business unit.
A robot from Shanghai's AgiRot pours glass of water. The company released a new robot AI model on Monday that learns from human videos.
AgiBot's GO-1 model, released on Monday, addresses a critical challenge in robot development: the high cost of training and data acquisition.
By adopting a Vision-Language-Latent-Action (ViLLA) framework, the GO-1 enables robots to learn directly from human videos, optimizing data utilization and reducing training time. This approach facilitates mass production and wider deployment of humanoid robots, further supported by the company's open-source initiatives.
The GO-1 model demonstrates a 32-percent improvement in task efficiency compared with other robot models, excelling in tasks like pouring water, clearing tables, and restocking beverages.
The company's projections are bolstered by substantial market growth forecasts. China's humanoid robot market, valued at 2.76 billion yuan (US$378 million) in 2024, is expected to surge to 75 billion yuan by 2029, capturing a significant portion of the global market.
A videoclip from AgiBot shows a robot arm handling beverage bottles.
New robot stars from China
China is strategically investing in humanoid robot development to accelerate digital transformation, pushing Chinese firms to compete with international leaders such as Tesla and Figure. Domestic players such as Hangzhou-based Unitree, Shenzhen-based UBTech, and AgiBot are emerging as key contributors to this sector.
Industry analysts, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have highlighted China's strong hardware and manufacturing capabilities but identified a need for advancements in ecosystems (software and AI models). AgiBot's new AI model aims to address this gap, enhancing the ecosystem for control systems and training data processing.
The GO-1 model incorporates a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, similar to DeepSeek, which enables the robot to learn from cross-embodiment and human operation data. Utilizing over a million real robot demonstrations, the MoE framework facilitates dexterous manipulation at high frequencies, greatly improving development efficiency while reducing costs.
"DeepSeek is a nice reference for our development path," said Yao.
AgiBot, which currently possesses approximately 1 million robot training data points, is also participating in a city-level project to further enhance the robot development ecosystem. The company plans to scale up production from 1,000 units to several thousand this year, driven by the capabilities of its new GO-1 model and the anticipated market expansion.
Agibot was founded in 2023 by Huawei Technologies' former "Genius Youth" Peng Zhihui, who was born in 1993.
Hangzhou-based Unitree, Shenzhen-based UBTech and Shanghai-based AgiBot are emerging as star robot firms from China.
