BEIJING — Chinese robotaxi companies are expanding abroad at a faster clip than U.S. rivals Waymo and Tesla — at a time when industry leaders say autonomous driving is finally near an inflection point.

“I think robotaxi has reached a tipping point, both here in China and in the U.S.,” Baidu CEO Robin Li said Tuesday on an earnings call, according to a FactSet transcript.

“There are enough people who have [had the] chance to experience driverless rides, and the word of mouth has created positive social media feedback,” he said, noting that the wider public exposure could speed up regulatory approval.

His comments echoed similar notes of optimism in the last few weeks from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Xpeng Co-President Brian Gu — who reversed his previously cautious stance after faster-than-anticipated tech advances. Xpeng is launching robotaxis in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou next year.

It’s a global market with significant growth potential, likely worth more than $25 billion by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs’ estimates in May.

To seize that opportunity, Chinese companies are aggressively expanding overseas and claim they are close to making robotaxis a viable business, rather than simply burning cash to grab market share.

In the last 18 months, Baidu, Pony.ai and WeRide landed partnerships with Uber that allow users of the ride-hailing app to order a robotaxi in specific locations, starting in the Middle East.

Such tie-ups “will be critical to success” as they enable robotaxi companies to operate more efficiently and reach profitability more quickly, said Counterpoint Senior Analyst Murtuza Ali.

That means ridership is enough to offset a Wuhan taxi fare that’s 30% cheaper than in Beijing or Shanghai, and far below prices in the U.S. or Europe. Besides developing autonomous driving systems, Baidu has also produced electrically-powered robotaxi vehicles — without relying on a third-party manufacturer — that are 50% cheaper.

“Once we can generate profit for every single car in a second-tier city [like Wuhan] in mainland China, we can generate profits in lots of cities across the world,” Halton Niu, general manager for Apollo Go’s overseas business, told CNBC.

“Scale matters,” he said. “If you only deploy, for example, 100 to 200 cars in a single city, if you only cover a small area of the city, you can never become profitable.”

Scale remains the dividing line. In the U.S., Alphabet-owned Waymo operates more than 2,500 vehicles and is expanding rapidly from major cities in California to Texas and Florida, with plans to enter London next year, following its first overseas venture in Tokyo.

Tesla sells its electric cars in China, and reportedly showed off its Cybercab in Shanghai this month. But it began testing its robotaxis in Texas only in June, and this week obtained a permit to operate in Arizona.

Amazon’s Zoox is also ramping up its expansion in the U.S., but has not released overseas plans.

The three companies have not disclosed plans to break even on their robotaxis.

Baidu Apollo Go’s Niu did not rule out an expansion into the U.S. But for now, the robotaxi operator plans to enter Europe with trials in parts of Switzerland next month, following their expansion in the Middle East this year.

Abu Dhabi last week gave Apollo Go a permit to charge fares to the public for fully driverless robotaxi rides, which are operated locally under the AutoGo brand, eight months after local trials began in parts of the city.

But Chinese startup WeRide said it received a similar permit on Oct. 31 to charge fares for its fully driverless robotaxi rides in Abu Dhabi, and claimed that removing human staff from the cars would allow it to make a profit on each vehicle.

That puts Pony.ai furthest from profitability among the three major Chinese robotaxi operators. Its CFO Leo Haojun Wang told The Wall Street Journal in mid-September that the company aimed to make a profit on each car by the end of this year or early next year.

Pony.ai plans to launch a fully autonomous commercial robotaxi business in Dubai in 2026, after receiving a testing permit in late September. The company plans to roll out in Europe in the coming months and has also outlined an expansion into Singapore.

Pony.ai and WeRide are set to release quarterly earnings early next week.

“Currently, companies like Waymo, Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai are leading in terms of fleet size, which positions them advantageously in the race for profitability,” said Yuqian Ding, head of China Autos Research at HSBC.

Fleet size is becoming a competitive marker. Pony.ai reportedly said it plans to release 1,000 robotaxis in the Middle East by 2028, while WeRide aims to operate a fleet of 1,000 robotaxis in the region by the end of next year.

Niu said Apollo Go operates around 100 robotaxis in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and plans to double its vehicle fleet in the next few months.

“Apollo Go has had a head start with significantly more test rides than the other two,” Kai Wang, Asia equity market strategist at Morningstar, said in an email. “The more testing and data you can collect from trips taken, the more likely the AI sensors are able to recognize the objects on the road, which means better safety as well.”

He cautioned that despite some initial progress, the robotaxi race remains uncertain as “no one has truly had mass adoption for their vehicles.”

Coverage remains limited. Even in China, robotaxis are only allowed to operate in selected zones, though Pony.ai recently became the first to win regulatory approval to operate its robotaxis across all of Shenzhen, dubbed China’s Silicon Valley. In Beijing, self-driving taxis are mostly limited to a suburb called Yizhuang.

Anecdotally, CNBC tests have found Pony.ai offered a smoother ride than Apollo Go, which was prone to hard braking.

As for safety — which is critical for regulatory approval — none of the six operators has reported fatalities or major injuries caused by the robotaxis so far. But Apollo Go and Waymo have begun advertising low airbag deployment rates.

Even if that’s not enough to convince regulators worldwide, Beijing is expected to ramp up support at home.

HSBC’s Ding predicts the number of robotaxis on China’s roads could multiply from a few thousand to tens of thousands between the end of this year and 2026, a shift that would give operators more proof that their model works.

A global scramble to exploit the Arctic’s untapped resources appears to be kicking into overdrive.

In a push to break China’s mineral dominance, countries around the world are increasingly turning to the thawing and sparsely populated northern polar region, seeking to seize its raw materials and benefit from new commercial trade routes.

U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, has repeatedly underscored the importance of Greenland, a vast Arctic territory, calling U.S. ownership of the island an “absolute necessity” for economic and national security reasons.

Canada has recently sought to ramp up Arctic investment as part of a push designed to unlock its resource potential, particularly amid strained diplomatic ties with the U.S.

Russia, which has a sprawling Arctic coastline, has long recognized the region as a strategic priority. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday lauded the construction of a new nuclear-powered icebreaker ship to navigate Arctic waters, saying “it’s important to consistently strengthen Russia’s position” in the region.

“The Arctic is seen as a source of a lot of different raw materials, not only oil and gas, but a lot of strategic materials and rare earths,” Marc Lanteigne, associate professor at the Arctic University of Norway in Tromso, told CNBC by telephone.

“Greenland, right now, is a repository of a lot of base metals, precious metals, gem stones, rare earths, uranium … it’s all there. The problem is that up until recently, it was seen as completely unviable to actually mine them,” Lanteigne said.

“But with climate change and the ability to navigate the Arctic Ocean much more frequently, especially during the summer months, Greenland is starting to be looked at much more carefully as a potential alternative source for a lot of these strategic materials to China.”

Greenland has been transformed by the climate crisis. A major analysis of historic satellite images, published last year by researchers at the U.K.’s University of Leeds, showed parts of the autonomous Danish territory’s ice sheet and glaciers have been replaced by wetlands, areas of shrub and barren rock.

For mining companies, the major ice loss has inadvertently made some of the island’s strategic minerals more accessible.

Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals, which is developing one of the world’s largest rare earth assets in southern Greenland, said there has been a notable upswing in investor interest in Greenland in recent months, particularly since Trump returned to office and raised the prospect of seizing control of the territory.

“I remember in his first term, in around 2018 and 2019, he made a big song and dance about the strategic value of rare earths in Greenland, so even back then,” Sage told CNBC by telephone.

Alongside Critical Metals, mining and exploration company Amaroq is also working to exploit some of Greenland’s resources. Amaroq CEO Eldur Olafsson said the firm’s recent discovery of high-grade rare earths in southern Greenland “means a lot to us.”

The project, which will take several years to develop, marked the firm’s first foray into the rare earths space as it expands its interests beyond gold and other strategic minerals.

Just one week after unveiling its rare earths discovery, the company on Nov. 11 confirmed commercial levels of germanium and gallium at its west Greenland hub, a development that Olafsson said could prove to be even more strategically significant.

“The germanium, gallium piece is, in my opinion, much bigger news than people understand,” Olafsson told CNBC by video call.

Germanium and gallium are essential components to a wide range of goods, from electric vehicles to semiconductors and military applications.

China, which is the primary global producer of these metals, imposed initial export controls on germanium and gallium in 2023, before singling out the U.S. with an outright ban late last year in response to curbs imposed on its chip sector by Washington. Beijing has since suspended its ban of gallium and germanium exports to the U.S., although the metals remain subject to restrictive measures.

“That is a mineral that the U.S. and the European Union need now. The rare earths are being processed by Lynas and MP Materials. That is something that you can access, I wouldn’t say easier, but you can access it … Germanium and gallium, if you don’t have them then that is a massive problem,” Olafsson said.

“We now have a short-term solution in mining terms to mine zinc, lead, silver and germanium and gallium, while we are then developing exporting the rare earths as well.”

Olafsson said it was important for the company to generate cashflow through its portfolio of gold and other strategic metals while it seeks to deliver on its rare earths potential, noting that the rare earths market is still relatively small.

Asked whether the race for the Arctic’s resources could be compared to a gold rush, Lanteigne said: “This is where perception and reality tend to kick in.”

He added: “There has been a lot of discussion about a rush to develop mineral resources in Greenland, for example, but I can say having been there quite a few times that if you are going to set up a mine then you need to bring in literally everything.”

Even in ideal conditions, Lanteigne said logistical challenges, such as Greenland’s harsh climate and remote landscape, means it could take 15 to 20 years before companies start to turn a serious profit.

State-owned mining firm LKAB is currently racing to develop one of Europe’s largest known deposits of rare earths. The discovery of the so-called Per Geijer deposit, which was announced in 2023, sits in close proximity to the firm’s massive iron ore mine in the Arctic city of Kiruna.

Niklas Johansson, senior vice president public affairs and external relations at LKAB, said the company is currently in discussion with European lawmakers to ensure that it will be economically viable to develop its resources.

“We’ve already got the material up to the ground. That’s all been paid for by the iron ore. Still, it’s not a given that this is a business case. It looks like it is for us at the moment, but it’s not something that you’d say, ‘oh it’s a no brainer, just run for it,'” Johansson told CNBC by telephone.

“I also tell them that if it looks like this for us, who has most of the infrastructure and everything in place, how do you think it will look for others in Europe?”