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.
Super Micro Computer shares plunged 20% on Wednesday after the company posted weaker-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter results, dented in part by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
CEO Charles Liang told investors on a conference call that the company has “taken measures to reduce the impact” of the tariffs.
The company has in recent years benefited from surging demand for AI servers packed with Nvidia chips, but has growth has since slowed.
The server maker also offered guidance late Tuesday that fell short of consensus estimates. Super Micro said it expects 40 cents to 52 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $6 billion to $7 billion in revenue for the fiscal first quarter.
Wall Street had projected 59 cents per share and $6.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter.
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For the full year, Super Micro said it expects revenue to be at least $33 billion. That’s a step down from its forecast in February, where it projected as much as $40 billion in sales, but greater than the LSEG consensus of $29.94 billion.
Super Micro reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents, compared with expectations for 44 cents. Revenue came in at $5.76 billion, which was below analysts’ forecasts of $5.89 billion.
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CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting to this story.
Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD, talks about the AMD EPYC processor during a keynote address at the 2019 CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., January 9, 2019.
The Santa Clara, California-based company reported adjusted earnings of 48 cents per share, falling short of the 49 cents per share expected by analysts polled by LSEG.
“AI business revenue declined year over year as U.S. export restrictions effectively eliminated MI308 sales to China, and we began transitioning to our next generation,” Su said.
For the current quarter, AMD forecasted $8.7 billion in revenue, plus or minus $300 million, versus $8.3 billion expected by analysts. The company said its guidance does not account for revenue from its MI308 AI chip designed for the China market to work around chip restrictions.
During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday, Su said the company has been working closely with the Trump administration on license requirements necessary to ship its chips to China, but took a “prudent” approach to its guide.
“From our standpoint, we think we have an extremely strong portfolio,” she said. “Tens of billions of dollars is the opportunity in a market that’s going to be, let’s call it 500 billion plus over the next few years.”
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Earlier this year, AMD said it would take a $800 million hit during the second quarter as a result of chip restrictions. AMD said in July it plans to soon resume those shipments as the Department of Commerce gets set to restart application review.
Some Wall Street analysts raised concerns over how soon those shipments may begin. Analysts at Morgan Stanley called the timing of the restart in China shipments “vague,” adding that the company requires a “near terms upside in GPU” to keep its premium.
“China upside sounds like it will take time to materialize (and it sounded like we shouldn’t count too much on it even if licenses are granted), pull-forward and inventory risks remain, and opex continues to march higher which is limiting earnings leverage,” wrote Bernstein analysts.
Investors also raised concerns about the company’s datacenter business, which grew 14% to $3.2 billion and includes its central processors and graphics processing units.
“We are more guarded on the company’s ability to drive significant scale in Datacenter GPUs over time, and think operating leverage is likely to be hampered by the significant OpEx we believe is needed for the company to support its software and systems efforts tied to datacenters,” wrote analysts at Goldman Sachs.
Su said Wednesday the company is seeing strong forecasts for compute from some of its largest customers and anticipates an “inflection point” into the third quarter.
“The data center business is actually the main driver of our growth, and we look at that as the opportunity in front of us,” she added.
Despite the post-earnings move, AMD’s revenues grew 32% from a year ago to $7.69 billion and topped a $7.42 billion estimate from analysts polled by LSEG. Net income jumped to $872 million, or 54 cents per share, up from $265 million, or 16 cents per share in the year-ago period.
The logo of Shopify is seen outside its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, on Sept. 28, 2018.
Chris Wattie | Reuters
Shopify shares soared 20% Wednesday after the company topped analysts’ estimates for the second quarter, and gave rosy guidance for the third quarter.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 35 cents adj. vs. 29 cents
Revenue: $2.68 billion vs. $2.55 billion
Second-quarter sales surged 31% year over year to $2.68 billion, an acceleration from a year ago, when revenue expanded roughly 20%.
The Canadian e-commerce company also offered third-quarter guidance that surpassed expectations. Shopify said it expects revenue to grow at a “mid-to-high twenties percentage rate” year over year, which is higher than the 21.7% growth projected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.
The upbeat report and guidance suggested Shopify, which sells software for e-commerce businesses, is navigating President Donald Trump‘s trade war better than feared. Last quarter, the company noted there was macroeconomic “uncertainty ahead,” but that it wasn’t seeing significant price increases among its merchants due to the tariffs.
“We had factored into our guidance some potential impact from tariffs, which did not materialize,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said on a conference call with investors.
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Online retail peers Amazon and eBay last week reported strong revenue growth, indicating that consumers kept buying despite concerns of tariffs and rising prices.
The company hasn’t seen any “drops in U.S. demand, whether inbound, outbound or local” and instead saw the market accelerate in the second quarter, Hoffmeister said. Many Shopify merchants have raised prices, he added.
Shoppers don’t appear to be stocking up or pulling forward demand in anticipation of the tariffs, he said.
“So far we’re seeing no slowdown from the tariffs and that includes up until early August, where we are today,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “The millions of stores on Shopify are doing really, really well.”
Shopify’s gross merchandise sales, or the total volume of merchandise sold on the platform, also came in higher than expected. GMS grew 29% year over year to $87.8 billion, surpassing Wall Street’s projected $81.5 billion, according to StreetAccount.
The company said it expects operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to be 38% to 39%, compared to 39% to 40% in the previous quarter.
Shopify has been investing heavily in adding more artificial intelligence tools to its platform as a way to attract and retain merchants. In May, the company released an “AI store builder” that generates webstores based on a few keywords. Shopify on Tuesday launched a set of tools to support shopping via AI agents.
Company executives said these investments appear to be paying off.
“As we continue to expand our platforms capabilities, add new products, and build for where commerce is heading, Shopify is becoming even more compelling to a wider range of businesses than ever before,” Hoffmeister said.