What's actually different about Apollo vs Optimus vs Digit at the hardware level?

[cynthia.muller]

@ashley_flor Short answer: 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. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.

[karen_kim]

Side note that might be relevant: 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. Makes me wonder how this looks in another five years.

[tariqlarsen]

@karen_kim Slight correction, though the overall point stands: 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.

[noah_pate]

@tariqlarsen This lines up with my experience. 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.

[johnrossi]

@noah_pate +1 to this. Worth adding: 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.

[ramirez77]

Just to be precise about one thing: 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. This whole thread is a good reminder how young this field still is.

[mia_lars]

@ramirez77 I dealt with almost this exact situation. 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.

[camila.jackson0]

@mia_lars Ran into exactly this myself. 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. 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.

[richard36]

Genuine beginner question - Automotive manufacturers - BMW, Mercedes, BYD, Geely, and Toyota among them - have become some of the most important early adopters, largely because their factories already have the structured environments and safety processes that make early humanoid deployment more tractable.

[mohammed64]

@richard36 This is a great summary, thanks. 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.