On October 4th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a video on a social platform showing the company's humanoid robot "Optimus" learning Kung Fu.
The video shows "Optimus" learning Kung Fu from professionals. It demonstrated martial arts techniques for self-defense, and it wasn't merely mimicking the professionals' movements but precisely responding to and countering each move. Some netizens asked whether "Optimus" was remote-controlled or powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Musk responded, "AI, not remote control."
It is understood that "Optimus" is Tesla's humanoid robot project, first announced publicly several years ago. Over the past year, the project's importance has significantly increased, becoming a more central focus for Tesla.
On September 7th, Tesla launched the official Weibo account "TeslaAI," verified as the "Official Tesla Account," and posted its first Weibo showcasing its humanoid robot. On the same day, Tesla released two photos of the humanoid robot with the caption: "I've been working on improving my physique."
On September 30th, "TeslaAI" posted again, stating that Tesla is working to scale up its humanoid robot, planning to launch the third generation by the end of 2025 and start mass production in 2026. Musk predicts an annual production of 1 million units by 2030.
In early September, Tesla released "Master Plan Part IV," signaling a major strategic shift in Tesla's future development plan: a comprehensive transition from electric vehicles and energy to artificial intelligence and robotics.
According to the introduction of Master Plan Part IV, over the past nearly two decades, Tesla has accumulated relentless technical expertise through developing electric vehicles, energy products, and bionic robots. As the influence of AI technology grows daily, the "next chapter" of Tesla's story will be "creating products and services that integrate AI into the real world," which will create a "sustainable future of abundance." Regarding how to achieve Master Plan Part IV, Musk stated on social media that Full Self-Driving (FSD) and the Optimus robot will be the company's most important priorities, and about 80% of Tesla's future value will come from the Optimus robot.
It is worth mentioning that domestic humanoid robot companies like Unitree Robotics and Ubtech are also actively making strides.
Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Unitree Robotics, stated at the 4th Global Digital Trade Expo on September 26th that the domestic robotics industry experienced rapid growth in the first half of this year, with "the average growth rate of Chinese intelligent robotics-related enterprises reaching 50% to 100%." Unitree recently updated its algorithms again, significantly improving the robot's stability. "We define it as an anti-gravity mode; basically, the robot can recover to a standing position under any disturbance. After the algorithm upgrade, theoretically, the robot can now perform various dance moves and martial arts movements."
Wang Xingxing stated that Unitree G1, the second humanoid robot released by Unitree in 2024, has been the "world's best-selling robot" from last year to this year. The newly launched humanoid robot Unitree R1 this year is more lightweight, currently starting at a price of 39,900 RMB. Although mass production has not yet been achieved, some orders are already being accepted.
On the evening of September 3rd, Ubtech, known as the "first stock of humanoid robots," announced that after securing the largest single order of nearly 100 million RMB for a global humanoid robot company in July, it had set a new record by obtaining a 250 million RMB procurement contract for embodied intelligent humanoid robot products and solutions from a well-known domestic enterprise. This contract primarily involves the humanoid robot Walker S2 (equipped with an autonomous hot-swappable battery system), and Ubtech will commence delivery within this year. This is also the largest contract for humanoid robots globally to date.
According to public statistics, as of now, Ubtech's Walker series humanoid robots have secured contracts totaling nearly 400 million RMB (including nearly 50 million RMB in humanoid robot orders delivered in H1). This figure does not include orders for the full-size research and education humanoid robot "Tiangong Walker," jointly launched by Ubtech and the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in March this year.
Meanwhile, cities like Hangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai are actively laying out plans for embodied intelligence.
On August 11th, the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Justice solicited public comments on the "Regulations of Hangzhou City on Promoting the Development of the Embodied Intelligent Robot Industry (Draft)" (referred to as the "Draft"). The Draft proposes exploring a tiered and classified regulatory system and a sandbox regulatory mechanism based on the technical characteristics and development patterns of the embodied intelligent robot industry, tailored to products and services of different intelligence levels and application scenarios. It aims to establish an inclusive, prudent, and innovation-encouraging regulatory ecosystem to stimulate innovation vitality among various entities.
On August 9th, at the "Industrial Development" main forum of the 2025 World Robot Conference, the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (also known as "Beijing E-Town") released an embodied intelligence social experiment plan and accompanying special support policies, "Several Measures of Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area on Promoting the Innovative Development of Embodied Intelligent Robots." These policies support enterprise development comprehensively through ten robust measures, precisely empowering the development of the embodied intelligent robot industry.
On August 6th, the General Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government released the "Implementation Plan for the Development of Shanghai's Embodied Intelligence Industry." It proposes striving to achieve, by 2027, no less than 20 breakthroughs in core algorithms and technologies such as embodied models and embodied corpora; establishing no less than 4 high-quality embodied intelligence incubators; gathering hundreds of leading industry enterprises, landing hundreds of major innovative application scenarios, and promoting hundreds of internationally leading products; and breaking through 50 billion RMB in the core industry scale of embodied intelligence in Shanghai. It will focus on supporting key technology R&D in perception and decision-making, motion control, embodied corpora, operating systems, etc., providing support of up to 30% of the total approved project investment, not exceeding 50 million RMB.
In March of this year, the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Bureau issued the "Shenzhen Action Plan for Technological Innovation and Industrial Development of Embodied Intelligent Robots (2025-2027)." It mentioned that by 2027, breakthroughs should be made in key core robot components, AI chips, AI-robot integration technology, multi-modal perception technology, high-precision motion control technology, dexterous manipulation technology, etc. It aims to newly cultivate over 10 enterprises with valuations exceeding 10 billion RMB and over 20 enterprises with revenues exceeding 1 billion RMB; achieve the landing of over 50 application scenarios valued at the billion-RMB level; reach a related industry scale of over 100 billion RMB; and have over 1,200 companies in the embodied intelligent robot industrial cluster. It plans to build a public service platform matrix to attract more upstream and downstream enterprises, research institutions, and innovation teams to join, forming a more complete industrial ecosystem, and to achieve internationally leading comprehensive strength in the embodied intelligent robot industry.
