How seriously should we take PAL Robotics given their much longer track record?

[carter42]

@edward.nelson Here's what I know on this: 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.

[erik_novi]

This matches what I've seen too. 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. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.

[wei_ross]

Counterpoint: 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. 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.

[ananya.novak]

Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. Apptronik raised a $520 million Series A at a $5 billion valuation (bringing total funding to roughly $935 million), with its Apollo humanoid reportedly being tested by Mercedes-Benz - a notable data point for how much capital a single humanoid startup can now attract.

[timothy.roberts2]

@ananya.novak Minor factual note: 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.

[tmartin]

@timothy.roberts2 Worth being a little skeptical of the marketing angle here. 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. 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.

[lukas.singh1]

I'd push back on this a bit. Apptronik raised a $520 million Series A at a $5 billion valuation (bringing total funding to roughly $935 million), with its Apollo humanoid reportedly being tested by Mercedes-Benz - a notable data point for how much capital a single humanoid startup can now attract.

[thomasmitchell]

From what I've seen: 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. 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.

[donna_wata]

@thomasmitchell I don't think that's quite right, for what it's worth. Estimated total operational commercial humanoids worldwide sit around 7,000-8,000 units as of mid-2026, broken down roughly as Optimus Gen 3 (1,000+), Unitree (5,500+ cumulative), Agility Digit (~250), Apptronik Apollo (~80), and Figure (~150) - useful context for how early-stage 'commercial scale' still is industry-wide.

[charlesbianchi]

Small correction on one detail: Total humanoid robotics funding from 2023 through early 2026 across major companies, smaller startups, and corporate R&D programs is estimated at more than $12 billion, illustrating how fast capital has piled into the sector in a short window.