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

[diego.moore6]

@ivan22 Not to derail, but this reminds me of something adjacent: 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. Makes me wonder how this looks in another five years.

[deborahperez]

I'd take that specific number with a grain of salt, honestly. 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. 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.

[carlossanchez]

@deborahperez This raises a question for me - 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. 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.

[emily.kumar]

+1 to this. Worth adding: 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.

[george92]

@emily.kumar That's the official framing, at least - reality tends to lag a bit. 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.

[yuki71]

@george92 Yeah, this tracks with what I've read as well. 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.