Humanoid Robots

Gao Yang, co-founder and chief scientist of Chinese startup Spirit AI, told Reuters that humanoid robots capable of handling most basic tasks on verbal command could become a reality as early as next year. "By mid-2027, you will be able to speak to a robot in natural language and it will complete a series of actions to carry out a task," he said, expressing confidence in the pace of software advances. The company has already achieved a roughly 90 percent success rate on simple tasks, but challenges remain with fine movements such as loosening a bottle cap and with handling unexpected situations, and adoption in ordinary households is still expected to take time. About 1,000 contract workers at the company wear data-collection devices at home and in factories, gathering movement data to train the robots. Spirit AI was founded in 2024 and has about 300 full-time employees. It has raised more than 670 million dollars to date and has deployed dozens of humanoid robots at battery giant CATL and online retail giant JD.com.

XPENG held the China launch event for its next-gen AI flagship SUV, the G9L, in Beijing, and said the model will be available in 64 global markets with a global launch event on October 12 at the Paris Motor Show. The G9L comes in both BEV and REEV versions, measures 5,120 mm long with a 3,100 mm wheelbase and a 0.605 wheelbase-to-length ratio, and runs on XPENG's VLA 2.0 model and the same Turing AI chip used in its IRON humanoid robot. The vehicle meets the design standards of four major five-star safety ratings worldwide, having completed 192 crash tests across the Euro NCAP, ANCAP, C-NCAP and CIASI protocols totaling more than 110 individual test items, plus global road testing across 26 countries and regions with cumulative mileage surpassing 6.74 million kilometers. The G9L will begin production in both Guangzhou, China, and Graz, Austria, becoming the fourth XPENG model to roll off the line at Magna's plant in Graz after the G6, G9 and P7+, meaning four localized models within a single year. At the event, Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng also said the world's first automated production line for advanced general-purpose humanoid robots was officially commissioned, using robots to produce robots, and confirmed XPENG's Paris Motor Show booth is in Hall 6.

Arm CEO Rene Haas said demand is running at record strength across edge, automotive, robotics and data center, and that near-term revenue growth is capped by a multi-stage manufacturing bottleneck spanning wafers, substrates, testers and memory rather than by any softening in orders. Data-center royalty revenue more than doubled year over year last quarter, and the most recent 500 million Neoverse cores shipped in nine months after the first billion took six years, while IDC reported spending on Arm-based accelerated server platforms nearly doubled over the past two quarters and surpassed x86. Haas said his confidence in hitting the $2 billion AGI CPU target rose from May to July and again from July to September, after he earlier cut that target to $1 billion on foundry capacity worries, and Arm has secured the manufacturing capacity needed to support the $1 billion opportunity for the AGI CPU. The AGI CPU, Arm's first in-house data center chip, carries first-generation gross margin guidance in the high 30% range to low 40s with a path to 50% over the next couple of years, below core royalty margins, so silicon revenue will initially dilute reported profitability. Arm shares trade at $243.98, down 10.11% over the past month and 7.66% in the last week but up 123.2% year to date, at a trailing P/E near 247x, after Q1 FY2027 EPS of $0.25 missed the $0.40 estimate and operating margin compressed to 7% from 11%; analysts carry an average target of $288.70.

Goldman Sachs raised its 2035 forecast for humanoid robot shipments to approximately 6.5 million units, up from about 1.4 million previously, a nearly fivefold increase, in its recently published 80-page Physical AI report. The bank also lifted its 2030 forecast from 256,000 to 890,000 units and its 2026 estimate from 51,000 to 75,000, and now values the 2035 humanoid market at roughly $138 billion versus its previous $38 billion estimate. Goldman estimates each humanoid could carry $3,000 to more than $6,000 of semiconductor content, which at 6.5 million units would translate into roughly $19.5 billion to $39 billion of annual chip demand. The bank expects logistics and warehousing to lead adoption, with automotive manufacturing following, and estimates Amazon's broader automation efforts could produce about $72 billion in cumulative service-cost savings from 2026 through 2030, potentially adding as much as 240 basis points to operating margins in an upside scenario. Goldman still flags reliability, limited real-world training data, autonomy and cost as obstacles, while Morgan Stanley has predicted 1 billion humanoid robots by 2050 and RBC Capital Markets calls it a $9 trillion market by then.

24/7 Wall St. rates Tesla a buy with a $389.34 price target, implying 6.54% upside from the current price of $365.44 at 90% confidence. Tesla's Q2 FY26 delivered a record 480,126 deliveries and revenue of $28.24 billion, up 25.5% year over year, but non-GAAP EPS of $0.33 missed the $0.54 estimate, CapEx more than doubled to $5.79 billion, and free cash flow swung to negative $1.09 billion. The bull case points to $465.56, or 27.4% upside, citing Robotaxi's more than 380,000 miles of unsupervised operation, Optimus targets of 1 million units a year for Gen 3 and 10 million for Gen 4, and energy deployments of 13.5 GWh in Q2 with Megapack 3 launching in 2026. At a trailing P/E of 380, Tesla has little margin for error, with operating margin compressed to 1.4% in Q2 and management guiding CapEx above $25 billion for 2026, while the bear case one-year target is $351.77. By comparison, NVIDIA trades at a P/E of 44 with a 60% operating margin, and Alphabet, whose Waymo logs 500,000 fully autonomous rides a week, trades at a P/E of only 15.

Elon Musk said on Sept. 9 that AI and robots will more than double the global economy in less than 10 years, a claim that implies roughly 8% annual growth against the International Monetary Fund's projected 3.0% global growth for 2026 and 3.4% for 2027. Global GDP is projected at roughly $126 trillion in 2026, so a clean double in ten years would require 7.2% growth every year, while doing it in under a decade pushes the requirement to about 8% annually over nine years. Musk had earlier told the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Sept. 1 that AI would increase the global economy by 20% to 30%, or $20 trillion to $30 trillion in added annual output, and that there would be at least one billion robots within a decade, each producing at least five times the output of a human. He also warned ministers of an industry power shortfall of roughly 15 gigawatts in 2027 as AI chip production outpaces electricity supply. Against that, China is expected to ship 50,000 humanoid robots in 2026, up from a January forecast of 14,000, with annual shipments forecast to reach 446,000 units by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley research cited by CNBC, and the Chinese humanoid market is valued near $2 billion this year and projected at $15 billion by 2030. Reaching one billion units within a decade from a 2026 base near 50,000 would require annual shipment growth of roughly 185%, with something like 650 million robots coming off assembly lines in the final year alone, roughly 1,500 times Morgan Stanley's most aggressive 2030 figure.

Bualuang Securities issued an analysis of KCE Electronics Public Company Limited, or KCE, noting reports that KCE is in the process of limited-volume printed circuit board production to test systems and the actual production line before beginning mass production, or pilot production, of PCB Optimus. If confirmed, this would open new upside for KCE. Meanwhile, Tesla is installing the first-generation Optimus production line at Fremont to prepare for production to begin in 2026, with that line designed for a long-term robot capacity of 1 million units per year. The second-generation line at Giga Texas is designed for long-term capacity of up to 10 million units per year. Bualuang research assumes one humanoid has about 40 to 50 PCB boards, with an average area of about 80 square centimeters per board, or 0.09 square feet. Compared with KCE, which currently has an average selling price of about US$14 per square foot and HDI at about US$18 per square foot, the research assumes a humanoid PCB ASP of US$22 per square foot, a premium of about 20% over current Auto HDI, which is still below selected AI and datacom PCB at around US$60 to US$100 or more per square foot. Based on these assumptions, one humanoid would have an addressable PCB value of about US$80 to US$95, or roughly US$90 per robot. Based on the Fremont designed capacity of 1 million robots per year, that equals a PCB opportunity of about US$90 million per year. If KCE can capture 10% of that content, it would generate additional revenue of about US$9 million per year, using only about 1% of KCE's production capacity, or about 2% of current revenue. At a gross margin of 25%, the research house estimates incremental profit of about 5% and sees that the potential of humanoids offers much more room to grow, which would also lead to a re-rating of its PER. Based on a 2027 PER of 40 times, that implies a price of about 70 baht. This afternoon, KCE informed the Stock Exchange of Thailand that, following some social media reports about the possibility of trading goods with a company in the United States, the company wishes to clarify that it is in the process of operations but has not reached any conclusion, and asks the public, investors, and related parties to consider information from the company's official channels and verifiable information. KCE shares in the afternoon were at 66.25 baht, up 7.75 baht, or 13.25%, with heavy trading value of 5.30211 billion baht.

Shenzhen UBTECH Robotics has secured overseas orders worth more than 50 million yuan. In the Hong Kong market on the afternoon of the 10th, Huazhu Group is raising 3.35 billion yuan through renminbi-denominated corporate bonds, while CSPC Pharmaceutical Group has obtained approval from Chinese authorities for clinical trials of a Parkinson's disease treatment and a hormone therapy drug. Wharf REIC is selling the Singapore shopping mall Scotts Square. Share buybacks in the Hong Kong market totaled 25 billion yen across 107 stocks. On the Chinese mainland, the Trump administration has demanded that Ford cut ties with Chinese companies, and the number of foreign visitors entering the mainland visa-free from January to August rose 27 percent.

Chinese electric vehicle makers are expanding into humanoid robots as the EV market slows, with companies like Xpeng announcing production plans despite doubts about commercial viability. Xpeng shares have fallen over 45% this year, while BYD is down more than 13%, and the average profit margin in China's vehicle manufacturing sector stood at just 1.5% in the first half of 2026. Chinese automakers account for more than half of the nearly 20 car companies globally that have entered humanoid robotics through in-house development, investment, or incubation as of August, according to Counterpoint Research. Xpeng raised $900 million for its robotics business last month, valuing the unit at over $6.3 billion, on par with its EV business's estimated $6.5 billion value. Analysts note that Chinese automakers can reuse up to 85% of their supply chain for robots and deploy them in their own stores and factories, but external demand remains uncertain, with Unitree's founder warning that commercialization could take years.

GMO AI & Robotics Shoji (Tokyo), a subsidiary of the GMO Internet Group, announced on the 8th that it has introduced an "ambulance" exclusively for humanoid robots. The vehicle is equipped with major parts and tools, and engineers ride along to rush to the scene and perform repairs in the event of a malfunction or trouble. Ahead of the full-scale proliferation of robots, the aim is to accumulate know-how in maintenance services that minimize downtime. President Tomohiro Uchida stated, "We are committed to playing a role in supporting the social implementation of humanoid robots."

XPENG has officially commissioned its humanoid robot production lines and completed the production-lines manufacturing of the world's first advanced humanoid robot, IRON, which autonomously walked off the lines, marking a critical leap from R&D prototyping to production-lines manufacturing. The production lines feature core process automation exceeding 80%, setting a new manufacturing benchmark with a precision, flexible, and intelligent production line. XPENG extends its automotive-grade manufacturing capabilities to robotics, marking a critical step toward mass production. Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng said the lines were created from scratch with no precedent, and the company aims to build a new type of robot with full generalization capabilities. XPENG robots are scheduled to enter mass production by the end of this year, with initial commercial-scenario rollouts in XPENG's own stores and campuses, and official market launch and delivery in China and overseas markets planned for 2027. On August 24, XPENG's robotics business raised over US$900 million at a post-money valuation of over US$6.3 billion, the largest single-round private capital raise in China's embodied AI industry to date.

AI cloud platform Nscale has entered a multi-year agreement to supply computing capacity to robotics maker Figure, with the initial deal valued at $3.5 billion and potentially scaling to more than $6 billion. Nscale plans to deploy Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform at its Barstow, Texas data center starting in the second half of 2027, with the capacity to reach up to 100,000 GPUs. As part of the arrangement, Nscale will take an equity stake in Figure and become its preferred compute provider, while the two companies will explore using Figure's humanoid robots to scale Nscale's supply chain operations. Figure's Helix AI model requires substantial computational resources, and its Figure 03 robot, designed for household use, was showcased at the White House earlier this year. The deal deepens Nvidia's exposure to the physical AI market through its investments in both Nscale and Figure.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said via video at the G20 meeting in North Carolina, USA, on September 1, 2026, that the growth of AI is making electricity a critical bottleneck sooner than expected. He cited estimates that by 2027, there could be a shortage of at least 15 gigawatts of power for AI chips, as AI chip production capacity grows 40-50% per year, while electricity generation outside China grows only 10-20% per year. Musk believes that countries that can increase power generation capacity quickly will attract AI data centers and generate revenue. Meanwhile, digital AI could increase the size of the global economy by 20-30%, or $20-30 trillion per year. By the end of 2027, AI will be able to perform almost all digital tasks. Humanoid robots could number more than 1 billion within 10 years and boost the economy by more than 10 times. Musk also suggested that governments adopt a "permission-first" approach rather than prohibition, and criticized EU regulations for slowing down technology development.

Chinese AI humanoid robot company UBTECH has announced that its interim loss narrowed, with sales of AI humanoid robots increasing 20-fold year-on-year. The company also saw significant revenue growth, particularly driven by expanding demand in the education and retail sectors. The loss reduction is attributed to improved cost management and increased sales of high-value-added products, and the company plans to strengthen its expansion into overseas markets as part of its future growth strategy.

24/7 Wall St. has issued a buy rating on Tesla with a $376.30 price target, implying 6.77% upside from the current price of $352.94, with 90% confidence. The bullish case is driven by Robotaxi expansion to seven US metros, Cybercab production, and Optimus manufacturing lines, with Robotaxi mileage growing over 10% weekly. Tesla's Q2 2026 revenue rose 25.5% to $28.24 billion, beating estimates, though non-GAAP EPS of $0.33 missed by 38.51% due to doubled capex. The bull-case target is $460.67, while the bear-case is $340.70. Compared to Alphabet's 33% operating margin and Rivian's 50,000-unit Uber deal, Tesla's 323x trailing P/E already prices in autonomous-driving optionality.