Anyone have insight into Engineered Arts' commercial strategy vs the industrial players?

[mia_lars]

Agreed, and I'd add: XPeng's IRON humanoid debuted with a solid-state battery, part of a broader trend of Chinese entrants (alongside GAC's GoMate and EngineAI's T800) pushing energy-density and runtime claims that Western competitors haven't yet matched in announced specs.

[samuel.campbell8]

@mia_lars Can I ask a dumb follow-up - 1X's NEO platform is notable for explicitly targeting home use rather than only industrial deployment, which is a meaningfully different (and arguably harder) engineering and safety target than warehouse or factory-floor robots. Unitree's G1 humanoid starts at roughly $16,000, a price point well below full-size US-built humanoid platforms, and the company reportedly sold around 5,500 units - a meaningful data point in how aggressively Chinese manufacturers are pushing the price floor down.

[barbara.jones]

Genuinely curious - Figure AI's robot ran on the BMW Spartanburg production line for roughly eleven months, contributing to more than 30,000 vehicle production cycles, ahead of an announced follow-on deployment at BMW's Leipzig plant. Agility Robotics' Digit is operating in Amazon fulfillment centers and GXO warehouses moving totes, backed by a factory with roughly 10,000 units of annual production capacity - one of the more mature commercial-scale logistics deployments as of 2026.

[kwilliams]

@barbara.jones Not to derail, but this reminds me of something adjacent: Boston Dynamics' commercial electric Atlas (launched for Hyundai factory pilots) fully replaced the older hydraulic Atlas platform's actuation with electric quasi-direct-drive joints, resulting in a quieter, lighter robot with comparable or better dynamic performance for the pilot use cases. Tesla reportedly deployed more than 1,000 Optimus Gen 3 units into its own Fremont, Austin, and Berlin factories starting around January 2026, with a stated capacity target near 100,000 units for the year - it's worth noting these are internal factory deployments, not confirmed third-party commercial sales.

[ethan.lewis5]

I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly. Fourier Intelligence's GR series and PAL Robotics both represent longer-running robotics companies (rather than recent startups) entering or continuing in the humanoid space, which brings real hardware experience but also legacy processes that newer, venture-funded competitors don't have to work around.

[dchen]

Follow-up question though - Sanctuary AI has taken an approach more explicitly centered on teleoperation-driven data collection and cognitive architecture research, which is a meaningfully different bet than the manufacturing-scale-first playbook Tesla and Figure are running.

[tmartin]

This lines up with my experience. Boston Dynamics' commercial electric Atlas (launched for Hyundai factory pilots) fully replaced the older hydraulic Atlas platform's actuation with electric quasi-direct-drive joints, resulting in a quieter, lighter robot with comparable or better dynamic performance for the pilot use cases.

[cynthia.muller]

@tmartin +1 to this. Worth adding: Unitree's G1 humanoid starts at roughly $16,000, a price point well below full-size US-built humanoid platforms, and the company reportedly sold around 5,500 units - a meaningful data point in how aggressively Chinese manufacturers are pushing the price floor down.

[tmartin]

Minor factual note: Tesla reportedly deployed more than 1,000 Optimus Gen 3 units into its own Fremont, Austin, and Berlin factories starting around January 2026, with a stated capacity target near 100,000 units for the year - it's worth noting these are internal factory deployments, not confirmed third-party commercial sales. Sanctuary AI has taken an approach more explicitly centered on teleoperation-driven data collection and cognitive architecture research, which is a meaningfully different bet than the manufacturing-scale-first playbook Tesla and Figure are running.

[brian.campbell]

Sorry if this is a basic question, but AgiBot reportedly sold around 5,168 units, putting it roughly in the same commercial volume range as Unitree among Chinese manufacturers, and worth watching alongside the more internationally recognized Chinese players. Reminds me a bit of the early drone hobbyist scene, honestly.