Tesla’s Optimus faces stiff humanoid competition at Beijing robot conference
Tesla displays Optimus next to two of its vehicles at the World Robot Conference in Beijing on Aug. 22, 2024.
CNBC | Evelyn
BEIJING — While Chinese companies last week showed off humanlike robots playing the zither or grabbing sodas, Tesla displayed its Optimus humanoid inside a clear box, motionless next to its cars.
Elon Musk has claimed Optimus can fold laundry, and one day cook, clean or teach children — tech he touts can give Tesla a value of $25 trillion. Musk says Tesla plans to test out the humanoids in its factories next year. It’s unclear how well they can perform right now.
Meanwhile, the World Robot Conference that began Wednesday in Beijing claimed 27 humanoids debuted at the event, a record. Similar to the country’s rush into electric cars a few years ago, money and resources are now flowing into the development of humanlike robots.
Total investment into China’s robotics industry in the last decade has exceeded 100 billion yuan ($14.01 billion), said Wei Cao, partner at Lanchi Ventures. He said the firm has around 15 billion to 20 billion yuan in assets under management.
Cao told CNBC he expects the next milestone for humanoid development will occur in the next year or two: a commercially viable use case in manufacturing in which the robots can move around and know how to prioritize a series of tasks.
That’s more sophisticated than repeating a single task, such as grabbing a water bottle, which the robots can already do, Cao pointed out. He noted how artificial intelligence, including such as models from OpenAI and Alibaba, has significantly improved how successful robots can be at processing information for performing tasks.
Lanchi Ventures is an investor in Shanghai-based Agibot, a humanoid startup founded in February 2023 by a one-time Huawei recruit. A few days before the World Robot Conference, the startup revealed five new robots, some available for preorder with a 5,000 yuan deposit.
Agibot aims to begin some deliveries in mid-October, followed by a batch of 300 robots starting in November. Its advertisement for the available humanlike robots showed they could act as sales people, gallery guides or pickers of factory parts. Some were on display at the conference.
Also in attendance was Stardust Intelligence’s Astribot S1 humanlike robot, which in late April had appeared in a promotional video folding a shirt and pouring wine. A few of the robots on display at the conference performed intricate Chinese martial arts moves, played the zither and wrote Chinese brush calligraphy.
Shenzhen-based Stardust was founded in December 2022 by a former member of Tencent and Baidu’s robotics projects. The startup says it uses artificial intelligence to support the robots’ imitation learning, where the machines can replicate actions after watching them.
Other humanlike robots, from lesser-known companies Galbot and Turui, put products into baskets or brought individual soda cans from a shelf to another table.
Some of the actions were stiff and slow. It’s not always clear whether the actions are being remotely controlled, or done autonomously. Demos don’t reveal everything about a product’s capabilities.
Compared to last year, the number and kinds of demos at the World Robot Conference increased significantly, Lanchi’s Cao said, noting that many students and young people also attended.
In his assessment, robot tech from Tesla and other U.S. companies are likely one to two years ahead of that in China. But Cao pointed out that China has self-sufficiency in more than 95% of the humanoid supply chain.
As for why Tesla didn’t showcase Optimus in action at the conference, Cao said the promo videos already show it has high capabilities and he understands if the company did not want to invest resources in having an engineer to operate demos.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jeff Burnstein, president of the U.S. Association for Advancing Automation (A3), spoke at the conference via a recorded video and showed some virtual demonstrations of humanoid startups such as Agility.
“These are demos, but they as well as others are now in pilot programs, and some companies we believe actually started using them more than just a pilot,” he said, noting the association is having its own humanoid conference in Tennessee on Oct. 7.
Specialized focus
Instead of replicating the entirety of a human being all at once, humanoid companies have tended to focus on specific parts before moving to others.
One of Shenzhen-based Limx Dynamics’ products released this year is the P1, a robot for research purposes that can balance on two legs. It can walk up and down stairs, and regain balance when shoved.
Limx Dynamics was founded more than two years ago. Its recent backers include Alibaba, according to PitchBook. The startup earlier this month announced its humanoid could move objects in a warehouse and autonomously replan how to complete a task if the target is moved.
Other companies at the World Robot Conference showed off an array of gears, robot hands and other parts.
Around the year 2030, a single robot will likely be able to perform simple household tasks, nursing care and medical treatment, partly on its own and partly in cooperation with humans, Shigeki Sugano, president of the Robotics Society of Japan, said Thursday during the conference forum.
That includes the ability to express emotions, he said. He doesn’t expect fully autonomous humanoids until after 2050.
Among the development challenges, he said that if a humanoid robot is to support humans fully, then it will need to address the current problem of not having enough power.
A humanoid’s battery may only last for two hours before needing to be recharged.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters near Air Force One at the the Lehigh Valley International Airport on August 03, 2025 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
After months of speculation, U.S. President Donald Trump has divulged more of his semiconductor tariff plans, but his latest threats might raise more questions than answers.
On Wednesday, Trump said he will impose a 100% tariff on imports of semiconductors and chips, but not for companies that are “building in the United States.”
As semiconductors represent an over $600 billion industry at the heart of the modern digital economy, any potential tariffs hold massive weight.
However, experts say the President has yet to provide key details on the policy, which will ultimately determine their full impact and targets.
“It’s still too early to pin down the impact of the tariffs on the semiconductor sector,” Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC.
“The final rule is likely still being drafted and the technical details are far from clear at this point.”
Big players win?
One of the biggest questions for chip players and investors will be how much manufacturing a company needs to commit to the U.S. to qualify for the tariff exemption.
The U.S. has been working to onshore its semiconductor supply chain for many years now. Since 2020, the world’s largest semiconductor companies such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to building plants in the U.S.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday, James Sullivan, Managing Director and Head of Asia Pacific Equity Research at J.P. Morgan, said this could mean most major chip manufacturers receiving exemptions.
If this is the case, the policy could have the effect of “continuing to consolidate market share amongst the largest cap players in the space,” Sullivan said.
Indeed, shares of major Asian chip companies like TSMC, which has significant investments in the U.S., rose in Thursday morning trading following Trump’s announcement. Early this year, TSMC announced it would expand its investments in the U.S. to $165 billion.
Shares of South Korea’s Samsung and SK Hynix — which have also invested in the U.S. — were also trading up after a Korean trade envoy reportedly said on radio that the duo would be exempt from the 100% tariffs.
An exemption on what?
Beyond the question of exemptions, many other aspects of the potential tariffs remain unclear.
Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia,” on Thursday, Stacy Rasgon, senior U.S. semiconductor analyst at Bernstein, noted that most of the semiconductors that enter the U.S. come inside consumer goods such as smartphones, PCs and cars.
For example, in 2024, the U.S. imported $46.3 billion of semiconductors — only about 1% of all U.S. imports, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
While Rasgon said tariffs on these imports may be manageable, broader tariffs would be harder to deal with.
“What we don’t know with [Trump’s] comments on tariffs, is it just raw semiconductors? Are there going to be tariffs on end devices? Are you going to be looking at tariffs on components within end devices?,” Rasgon asked.
The confusion and questions around semiconductor tariffs were brought to the forefront after the U.S. Department of Commerce started a national security investigation of semiconductor imports in April, just as the sector was exempted from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs.
The vague language from the Trump administration — though not invoked in the president’s latest proclamations — could theoretically be used to apply broad tariffs to an enormous segment of the electronics supply chain. It’s also unclear on the extent that semiconductor materials and manufacturing equipment used to manufacture chips would fall under the tariffs.
Complex supply chains
Potential tariff strategies could also be complicated by the intricate and interdependent nature of the semiconductor supply chain.
Rasgon gave the example of American chip designer Qualcomm, which sends their designs to TSMC to be manufactured in Taiwan and then imported to the U.S.
“Does that mean those [chip imports] would not be tariffed, because they’re made at TSMC, and TSMC is building in the U.S.?… I don’t know. Hopefully that’s how it would be,” he said.
Another large buyer of semiconductors in the U.S. are cloud service providers like Amazon Web Services and Google, which are essential to power Washington’s AI plans.
According to a recent report from ITIF, semiconductors contribute $7 trillion in global economic activity annually by underpinning a range of downstream applications including AI and “big data.”
In a potential sign of American companies seeking to move their chip supply chains into the U.S., Apple CEO Tim Cook, alongside Trump at the White house Wednesday, announced that it will be supplied chips from Samsung’s production plant in Texas.
The company also announced an additional $100 billion in U.S. investments, raising its total investment commitments in the country to $600 billion over the next four years.
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