Unitree’s G1 robot at the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, Spain, on March 6, 2025.
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American tech giants like Tesla and Nvidia are racing to develop humanoid robots, stressing their importance to the future economy. But analysts warn they are already at risk of losing out to China.
So-called humanoid robots — artificial intelligence-powered machines designed to resemble humans in appearance and movement — are expected to provide a range of use cases, such as filling industrial and service sector jobs.
Investor excitement surrounding the robots has been mounting amid increased mentions from tech leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who ushered in “the age of generalist robotics” earlier this month when announcing a new portfolio of technologies for humanoid robot development.
In the manufacturing of the robots themselves, Tesla’s humanoid robot project, Optimus, appears to be leading in the U.S., with CEO Elon Musk announcing plans to produce about 5,000 units this year.
While Musk’s ambitious plans could give it a leg up on U.S. competitors like Apptronik and Boston Dynamics that are yet to hit the mass market, he will face stiff competition from a familiar source: China.
Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia, speaks about humanoids during the 2025 CES event in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2025.
Bridget Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics last month briefly sold two humanoid robots to consumers on the e-commerce platform JD.com, as per local media. Meanwhile, Shanghai-based robotics startup Agibot, also known as Zhiyuan Robotics, has matched Optimus’s goal to produce 5,000 robots this year, according to the South China Morning Post.
As Chinese electric vehicle companies like BYD begin outpacing Tesla’s growth and undercutting its prices, experts say a similar dynamic could play out in humanoid robotics.
“China has the potential to replicate its disruptive impact from the EV industry in the humanoid space. However, this time the disruption could extend far beyond a single industry, potentially transforming the labor force itself,” said Reyk Knuhtsen, analyst at SemiAnalysis, an independent research and analysis company specializing in semiconductors and AI.
Dancing on the competition?
In a research note in February, Morgan Stanley estimated that current building costs of humanoid robots could range from $10,000 to $300,000 per unit, given different configurations and downstream application requirements.
However, Chinese companies are already undercutting U.S. competitors in terms of price thanks to superior economies of scale and manufacturing capabilities, according to Knuhtsen.
For example, Unitree released its G1 humanoid robot for consumers in May with a starting price of $16,000. In comparison, Morgan Stanley estimates that the selling cost of Tesla’s Optimus Gen2 humanoid robot could be around $20,000, but only if the company is able to scale, shorten its research and development cycle, and use cost-effective components from China.
Unitree made a major splash in the robot’s space in January when 16 of its highest-performing H1 humanoid robots joined a group of human dancers to celebrate the Lunar New Year in a demonstration broadcast on national television.
But there are signs that China’s progress in robots go much further. Morgan Stanley’s February research note found that the country has led the world in patent filings mentioning “humanoid” over the past five years, with 5,688 patents compared with 1,483 from the United States.
Large players such as Xiaomi and EV makers, such as BYD, Chery, and Xpeng, are also involved in the humanoid robot space.
“Our research suggests China continues to show the most impressive progress in humanoid robotics where startups are benefitting from established supply chains, local adoption opportunities, and strong degrees of national government support,” the note said.
Beijing has increasingly backed the space, with government departments promoting their development. In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guidelines for the space, calling for “production at scale” by 2025.
According to Ming Hsun Lee, head of Greater China automotive and industrials research at BofA Global Research, China sees humanoid robots as an important industry because of their potential to mitigate looming labor shortages.
“I think in the short-term, three to four years, we will see humanoid robots initially applied in production lines to compare some workers, and in the midterm, we will see them gradually spread into the service industry,” he said.
Musk predicted that he’d have over 1,000, or a few thousand, Optimus robots working at Tesla in 2025. According to Chinese state media, EV makers like BYD and Geely have already deployed some of Unitree’s humanoid robots at their factories.
Lee said that increased adoption will coincide with a “very fast” decline in component costs, also noting that China owns around 70% of the supply chain for these components.
According to a report by SemiAnalysis earlier this month, the Unitree G1 — “the only viable humanoid robot on the market” — is entirely decoupled from American components.
The report warns that China is the only country positioned to reap the economic awards of intelligent robotics systems, including humanoid robots, which “poses an existential threat to the US as it is outcompeted in all capacities.”
“To catch up, U.S. players must rapidly mobilize a strong manufacturing and industrial base, whether domestically or through allied nations … For Tesla and similar firms, it may be wise to begin reshoring or ‘friendshoring’ their component sourcing and manufacturing to reduce reliance on China,” said SemiAnalysis’ Knuhtsen.
Bank of America analysts predicted in a research note this month that the deployment of humanoid robots will accelerate rapidly, aided by the development of AI, with global annual sales reaching 1 million units by 2030 and 3 billion humanoid robots in operation by 2060.
Mike Intrator, Chief Executive Officer and founder of CoreWeave, (C) rings the opening bell surrounded by Executive Leadership and family during the company’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq headquarters on March 28, 2025 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
CoreWeave shares rallied more than 18% on Tuesday and looked to bounce back from a lackluster second trading day on the public markets.
Shares of the artificial intelligence cloud company, which rents out access to Nvidia’s graphics processing units to other technology companies, dropped more than 10% on Monday and fell below the initial public offering price of $40. The stock opened at $39 on Friday and closed flat at $40.
CoreWeave opened on the public markets Friday in the biggest venture-backed tech IPO for a U.S. company since 2021. It served as a key test for a public offering market that came to a near standstill about three years ago in the face of high inflation and rising interest rates that shunned technology investors
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Many hoped that CoreWeave would usher in a more favorable period for IPOs as companies such as ticket reseller StubHub, Klarna and Hinge Health join a mounting list of names readying in the wings.
CoreWeave’s disappointing performance has failed to lift investor confidence.
Markets have also sold off against a backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty spurred by President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. CoreWeave lowered its offering price to $40 last week from an initial expected pricing range of $47 to $55 range. The company also downsized the offering to 37.5 million shares from 49 million.
CEO Mike Intrator told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday that the company had to “scale or rightsize the transaction for where the buying interest was” against a backdrop of macroeconomic headwinds.
The company, which counts Microsoft as its largest customer, last hovered near a $19 billion market capitalization. Its most significant competitors include Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Oracle.
In its prospectus filed in March, the company reported a net loss of $863 million. CoreWeave said revenue grew more than 737% last year to $1.92 billion.
Photo illustration shows the TikTok logo displayed on a mobile phone screen.
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For the second time this year, TikTok is staring at a deadline that could determine its fate in the U.S. and that of numerous creators and brands that have built businesses on the Chinese-owned social app.
The sense of urgency that led some creators to post wistful goodbye videos in January has shifted to a more cautiously optimistic outlook, with creators and firms saying they believe TikTok will remain in the U.S. They are, however, hedging their bets.
“I’m trying to be optimistic and hope that they keep it, but as a creator, I have to be prepared either way,” said Gianna Christine, a creator with 2.7 million TikTok followers.
TikTok could be effectively banned in the U.S. on April 5 because of a national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden that requires its Chinese parent ByteDance to divest the app’s American operations. ByteDance originally faced a Jan. 19 deadline to sell TikTok, but Trump signed an executive order instructing the attorney general to not enforce the law, granting the Chinese company 75 more days to divest the U.S. portion of its business.
Gianna Christine makes lifestyle videos about living in New York City to her nearly 3 million followers on TikTok.
Gianna Christine
Like others who spoke with CNBC, Christine said she hasn’t received any direct updates from TikTok about its future. Christine said she’s staying positive about TikTok’s chances of remaining in the U.S. but she’s also expanding her presence on platforms like Snapchat and YouTube as a precaution.
“You never know what will happen,” Christine said.
Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump said many positive comments about TikTok and used the app as a campaign tool. Trump said Sunday that he is “pretty certain” that a TikTok deal will be reached before the April deadline, according to AFP. Last week, Trump said he may extend the deadline if a deal isn’t reached and that he may reduce tariffs on China to help facilitate a transaction.
“I really don’t see TikTok getting banned,” said Olivia Plotnick, the founder of the Wai Social marketing and consultancy agency. “Trump really is going to want to show how amazing he is, and make a deal happen.”
TikTok and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Whatever is in store for TikTok, the company is acting like business as usual.
Current and former TikTok workers said they have received no communication from management about its future in the U.S. Brands and creators said they have received no updates from the company either.
That lack of communication and the uncertainty of the app’s future hasn’t stopped TikTok from moving forward with new partnerships.
Marketing firm Meltwater, for example, announced that it joined TikTok’s marketing partners program in March. Aditya Jami, Meltwater’s tech chief, said that his TikTok contacts seemed to be “in the dark” about the app’s future, but they went ahead with the partnership, which will require deep integration between the two companies.
“They are actually going to do more and more things that we can build together and then expose to our customers, so I feel like it’s going business as usual,” Jami said.
TikTok creator Alyssa McKay has more than 10 million followers, but she’s been proactive about diversifying her following across more platforms.
“If you’re not already posting on Snapchat, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, that’s where you need to be,” said McKay, adding that her efforts to get ahead of a potential ban have resulted in her already earning more revenue from other platforms than she does on TikTok.
Alyssa McKay is a content creator with over 10 million followers on TikTok.
Alyssa McKay
The first TikTok ban deadline didn’t significantly alter the social media postings from creators and brands, according to data provided to CNBC by Later, a social media and influencer marketing firm.
Social media users increased their posts on Threads and YouTube by 10% and 6%, respectively, the week of the TikTok ban in January compared to the week prior, according to Later. Still, the general posting habits of brands and creators during the week after the January deadline compared to the week preceding it were nearly identical, a spokesperson for Later said.
Throughout March, creators and brands steadily reduced the number of scheduled TikTok posts they plan to publish during the weeks leading up to the April deadline while increasing their scheduled Instagram posts, Later data showed. The March data suggests creators and brands are “reallocating content to Instagram as a safer or more stable alternative,” the Later spokesperson said.
For a brief moment, the Chinese social media app RedNote rose to the top of Apple’s app store during the week leading to the January deadline. Known as Xiaohongshu in China, that app has similar short-video features as TikTok, but it has a user base comprised mostly of women from more affluent Chinese cities that embraced the sudden influx of American users, Plotnick of Wai Social said.
“They were super welcoming, and it was a really fun time,” Plotnick said.
RedNote’s moment in the sun won’t likely repeat. The app is no longer a priority now that TikTok has resumed normal operations, creators and brands said.
“I don’t foresee buzz around alternative apps like RedNote,” Later CEO Scott Sutton said. “Those were a blip and lacked the staying power of other platforms.”
It’s unclear whether lawmakers who are concerned about the Chinese Communist Party or TikTok-competitors like Meta or Google would take to the courts to enforce the national security law, said Neil Chilson, a former chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission who now heads AI policy at Abundance Institute non-profit. Taking that kind of legal action carries the risk of upsetting TikTok’s giant user base and Trump, Chilson said.
“Trump likes this sort of leverage that the law provides him,” Chilson said. “He’s obviously using quite aggressively — not quite in the text of the law — his latitude to make deals to continue to string this along.”
Amazon has restarted drone deliveries in two states after a months-long pause, the company confirmed.
In January, Amazon halted Prime Air deliveries in College Station, Texas, and Tolleson, Arizona, the two U.S. markets where it’s testing the service, as the company rolled out a software update to its drone fleet.
Amazon discovered an abnormality with the drone’s altitude sensor, caused by dust in the air, that could have caused its system to produce an inaccurate reading of its position relative to the ground, the company said. Amazon “never experienced an actual safety issue,” but said it opted to suspend deliveries while it corrected the issue.
The company brought drone deliveries back online last week after it completed the software update and received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit said in a statement.
“Safety underscores everything we do at Prime Air, which is why we paused our operations to conduct a software update on the MK30 drone,” Zammit said. “The updates are now complete and were approved by the FAA, allowing us to resume deliveries.”
An FAA spokesperson didn’t immediately provide a comment.
Zammit said Prime Air has seen “unprecedented levels of demand” since it resumed service. David Carbon, an executive who oversees Amazon’s drone program, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week that the company dropped a bottle of ZzzQuil sleep medicine at an Arizona customer’s home in “31 minutes and 30 seconds.” Carbon didn’t say how far the drone had to fly and Zammit declined to provide details.
For over a decade, Amazon has been working to bring to life founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and batteries to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. But progress has been slow, as Prime Air has only been made available in the U.S. in College Station and Tolleson. A test site in Lockeford, California, was shuttered last April. The program was also hit with layoffs in 2023 as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy cut costs across the company.
The company also introduced a new version of its delivery drone, called the MK30, which is designed to be quieter than previous models and can fly in light rain.
Customers in College Station, a quiet suburban town that’s about 100 miles northwest of Houston, had previously complained about the drones’ noise levels. After rolling out the MK30, the company is also taking steps to relocate its drone hub farther away from residents’ homes later this year.
Before Amazon suspended drone deliveries, the MK30 crashed in two separate incidents during test flights at the company’s facility in Pendleton, Oregon. Last December, a software issue caused two drones to crash, according to Bloomberg. And in September, a pilot mistakenly caused a “mid-air collision” between two drones after he tested how the MK30 would perform when faced with a failed propeller, according to a federal crash report.
Another crash occurred on Feb. 21 during tests at the Pendleton site, which resulted in a drone sustaining substantial damage, according to a report compiled by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Amazon said the crashes were unrelated to its decision to halt drone operations. The company has said these kinds of incidents, which have also occurred with other models in previous years, are part of the testing process, as it pushes drone systems “up to the limits and beyond.”