Battle of the bots: China, US scrap for top of the humanoid heap
China, fuelled by recent successes from DeepSeek and Unitree, is making a play for pole position in humanoid robots. Can the US hold its ground?
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 7 – the tech sector’s premier trade exhibition – Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took the stage for his keynote address. During the speech, where he declared the field of robotics was nearing a watershed moment, he was flanked by 14 gleaming, waving humanoid models from industry leaders.
Weeks later, at the Spring Festival Gala – China’s annual televised Lunar New Year extravaganza, watched by over a billion people – robotics firm Unitree put on a demo of a different sort.
Both crowds marvelled at the spectacles. The high-profile events have set the tone for a competitive 2025, as numerous robot makers marshal their resources for mass production and global commercialisation.
Players from all over the world are eager for their share of the spoils. While no one country appears to be completely dominant in this 21st century “space race,” China and the United States are undoubtedly in the first tier.
Among the group of 14 robots onstage at CES – which included a Unitree H1 – six of their companies were based in China and four were from the United States.
