Is Europe losing the robotics race to China, and does it matter?
Chinese firms like nitree and Agibot are dominating the global robotics market.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz was treated to a live display of humanoid robots dancing, doing backflips and boxing in Hangzhou in western China in February.
On his return, Merz said Germany was “simply no longer productive enough.”
The fact that humanoid robots took centre stage at the Chinese New Year celebrations showcased China’s dominance of the market at the beginning of 2026, with Hangzhou-based Unitree dominating innovation in the sector. Some 87 percent of all humanoid robots that were delivered in 2025 were made in China.
But while Unitree’s humanoid robots have attracted a lot of column inches, and eyeballs, the actual amount of robots shipped by global manufacturers is relatively modest: just over 13,000 were sold last year. Unitree is in second place,with more than 4,000 below Agibot with over 5,000. (5,168), Forbes reported.
That has not stopped investors pouring money into the sector: Barclays research in January 2026 found that the global humanoid robotics market, currently worth $2-3 billion, could reach $200 billion by 2035. It is suggested that Europe may hold a competitive edge in the supply chain due to its historical strength in engineering and automotive manufacturing.
Europe’s fight
Those in the sector aren’t so sure: Rodion Shishkov, founder of London-based construction technology company All3, told Euronews Next that the amount of capital available to robotics startups in Europe is a fraction of that available in the United States and China. As a result, his startup is fighting for fuel while his Chinese and American rivals have plenty in the tank.
“Here in Europe I have to fight - and I mean, literally, fight - for tens of millions of euros of investment while a similarly-positioned, similarly-developed company in the United States can obtain billions of dollars with the same effort,” Shishkov told Euronews Next.
The shortfall is even more acute, Shishkov said, because the kind of functional non-humanoid robots that All3 is developing for use on European construction projects right now are playing second fiddle - funding-wise - to much-hyped humanoid startups. This despite the fact that in many use cases- humanoid startups are far less efficient.
“You need to think of function first. If there is a huge hole to be dug, we don’t need a humanoid robot with a spade, we need an excavator. If there is a self-driving car, do we need a humanoid robot driving it, no. We need to stop starting with the shape and start with the function,” he said.
Andrei Danescu, CEO of autonomous robot and AI logistics startup Dexory, said that Merz’s trip to China “risks framing a very serious technology race as a beauty contest. The question is not whether a robot walks on two legs, it's whether it solves a real problem.
He cited collaborative arms on factory floors, autonomous logistics vehicles in warehouses, or surgical assistants in operating theatres as examples of robots that were already reshaping industries in Europe. but Danescu warned that Europe should not be complacent about Chinese investment in robotics.
The robot supply chain
“China is making serious, sustained investments across the full robotics stack, hardware, software, manufacturing integration, and other regions are moving with real urgency too. This is not a moment for complacency, for bureaucratic stillness,” he said.
Europe's robotics ecosystem is small but strong, in precision engineering, in industrial automation, in some critical applications. But strength is not the same as momentum.”
Danescu called for European regulators to provide speed-enablement and clarity on standards, on liability frameworks for autonomous systems and on public investment that matches the strategic ambition of other global players.
“The AI Act is a start, but robotics needs its own focused attention - policy, funding, strategy. We cannot regulate our way to competitiveness, but we can certainly regulate our way out of it,” he said.
Sam Baker spent a decade working with robots in industrial manufacturing settings before joining venture capital firm Planet A as an investor. He said one of the major challenges he encountered - and which is still ongoing today - is integrating robots into established workflows in industries like construction, where they need to operate alongside human employees.
In that, he said, the biggest bottleneck is safety.
“Not a lot of people are talking about itboth from a regulatory perspective and a standards perspective. How do you deploy this kind of automation - whether that is humanoids or bipedals or co-bots - that have industrial levels of strength amongst humans,” he told Euronews Next.
“There's nothing written right now that tells you exactly how you need to do it and what your safety concept needs to look like.”
Some companies are already trialling non-humanoid robots in factory settings: BMW recently announced that it will trial humanoid robots at one of its factories in Leipzig in Germany. In a press release, the automaker said the robots would be integrated into existing production lines and could also be utilised to develop batteries and components.
The move has raised eyebrows in robotics circles, but Baker believes it is likely the right approach.
“They're not going in and saying: ‘We've definitely got this use case where we can generate this much ROI and speed up this process by X.’ They're saying: ‘OK, here's something that seems like it could work with this kind of form factor. Let's give it a shot and see what happens,” he said.
As for competition with China, Baker thinks that in terms of hardware, that ship has sailed.
“We would be naive to think that we can really achieve sovereignty and independence from Chinese hardware supply chains in robotics,” Baker said.
“I think it is an excellent time to build a robotics business in Europe. There's just a lot of white space to be filled on the intelligence and data side. And there's a lot of room for experimentation, which doesn't have to be very expensive.”
“We’re watching the biggest shift in global economic power unfold in real time,” Noble said, arguing that while the US remains preoccupied with domestic political disputes and expansive fiscal programmes, Beijing has embarked on “the most AGGRESSIVE industrial strategy since the Marshall Plan”.
Artificial intelligence has become the most visible battleground.
“[In the week of the Chinese New Year] five Chinese AI companies — Zhipu, ByteDance, Alibaba, Moonshot, and DeepSeek — released or announced major model upgrades simultaneously during Spring Festival,” Noble said.
Citing a RAND report published last month, he noted that “Chinese AI models now run at one-sixth to one-fourth the cost of comparable American systems. One-sixth the cost.”
By contrast, surveys of US corporate adopters suggest limited near-term productivity gains.
“The vast majority of US companies investing in AI report ‘no change’ in productivity, decision-making, or customer satisfaction,” Noble said. “America is burning cash. China is building products.”
Semiconductors form a parallel front. The so-called “Four Dragons” — Moore Threads, MetaX, Biren and Enflame — have either gone public or filed for IPOs in recent months. Huawei, he said, is doubling output of its Ascend chip to 600,000 units this year and has set out a three-year roadmap to overtake Nvidia. Bernstein estimates that Nvidia’s China market share could fall from 40% to 8% under current export restrictions, while Huawei’s could rise to 50%.
“They’re not competing with our tech stack. They’re REPLACING IT,” Noble said, pointing to Beijing’s mobilisation of $70bn in chip incentives and plans to require state telecoms groups to replace AMD and Intel products by 2027.
Energy policy underpins the strategy. China invested $1 trillion in clean energy in 2025 — four times its spending on fossil fuels — with the sector accounting for more than one-third of GDP growth, Noble said. The country now produces a terawatt of solar panel capacity annually, accounts for over 70% of global EV production and sells nearly half of its new cars as electric. “They can power their AI data centres with cheap renewable energy they built themselves,” he added.
Monetary signals reinforce the shift. China’s central bank has purchased gold for 15 consecutive months, with January reserves reaching $369.6bn, up $51bn in a single month.
“They’re not just accumulating gold. They’re building the infrastructure to challenge how global commodities get priced,” Noble said, noting the expansion of renminbi-priced contracts on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.
The increase in gold reserves is running in parallel with an accelerating selloff of China’s treasury bill holdings. China’s holding of US treasuries has halved since its peak of $1.3 trillion in 2012 to around $600bn now. And the pace has accelerated since the US weaponised the dollar by barring Russia from using the greenback in the 2022 SWIFT sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
Trade flows have also been redirected as part of the remake of the global economy underway at the moment, driven by rising geopolitical global tensions. China’s total exports reached a record $3.77 trillion last year, producing a $1.19 trillion surplus, but within that the share of exports to the US fell 28.6%, shipments to Africa rose 27.5% and to ASEAN 8.2%. Goldman Sachs has raised its 2026 China growth forecast to 4.8%.
Add the components together — low-cost AI, a parallel chip ecosystem, $1tn a year in clean energy, sustained gold purchases and a trade surplus pivoted towards the Global South — and the trajectory is clear, Noble argued. “China is building the future. America is unfortunately just talking about it.”
Honor’s new ‘robot phone’ wants to be your best AI friend and dance with you
Honor unveils a phone with a robotic arm — and a humanoid robot to match at MWC 2026.
One of the most talked about and looked at new tech on show at the Mobile World Congress was Honor’s “Robot Phone,” a concept device that the company says turns your smartphone into an AI companion.
After showing the front and back of your hand, the gimbal system pulls out and cleverly unfolds. A pair of eyes then comes up on the phone screen, which will track your eyes to allow the gimbal to follow you around, which Honor calls “embodied AI”.
The AI can speak to you and answer your questions, such as does my outfit look good. To which it responds with text on the phone, telling you you look “stylish” and “professional”. While it will pick up on various aspects of your outfit, it will never tell you it looks bad, an Honor representative said.
As well as complementing you, the gimbal can track subjects in real time, follow users during video calls by adjusting its own angle, and even respond to music with movement.
“The robot phone is the first phone that can see, hear, and interact with the world physically because we have this robotic arm built in the phone, now you can use it as a true companion.” Thomas Bai, AI product expert at Honor told Euronews Next.
If you went hiking, for example, it could be your tour guide and travel companion, as it could tell you about the landscapes, “I think that's a real world magic,” he said.
As well as being your companion, it can also help content creators with filming and taking photos.
The device has a 200-megapixel camera, a three-axis gimbal stabilisation, an AI object-tracking mode, and a feature called AI SpinShot that enables smooth 90- and 180-degree rotational transitions for cinematic-style video, which could all be used one-handed.
But with any foldable device, durability is a key question. Bai said he is “confident” about how robust the phone is because the same materials used in the company’s foldable devices, steel and titanium alloy.
Another smartphone on display was Honor’s Magic V6, its latest flagship foldable and the first device of its kind powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip. It is one of the slimmest foldables on the market at 8.75mm when closed, but with a massive 6,660mAh battery.
The robot phone is a concept which aims to be released in the market later this year. The price has not yet been revealed.
But Honor did not just preview its smartphones. One of its biggest announcements was its entry into the humanoid robot market.
The company said the robot was not an industrial tool but a consumer-grade device.
“There are many things we imagine that a robot can do. First of all, it can be your companion,” Bai said.
“It can talk to you, and it can help you to do tasks. For example, like some house cleaning things, maybe help you wash dishes, something like that. We hope it could happen in the future.”
Honor said its robots will target three scenarios: retail assistance, workplace inspections, and personal companionship.
The company said its deep base of user data and experience from smartphones gives it an edge over traditional robotics firms in building machines that can recognise individuals and adapt to their needs from the very first interaction.
Honor's MWC 2026 announcements show how the Chinese company is actively repositioning itself from smartphone manufacturer to broad AI hardware platform.
“The humanoid robot is part of our Alpha plan. Yes, we transformed from a smartphone company into an AI ecosystem device company,” Bai said
“That's a new category of our products and we're very excited to bring it to our customers.”
Is China training an army of robots? Nope, it’s an AI-generated video
Some media users have been sharing videos that they claim are proof that China has started training humanoid robot soldiers. It turns out, however, that these videos were – surprise surprise – created by AI.
Issued on: 05/03/2026 -
By:The FRANCE 24 Observers/Quang Pham
Have Chinese dancing robots been turned into killing machines? People were amazed when Chinese television broadcast Lunar New Year celebrations featuring a dance routine carried out by a bunch of G1 humanoid robots, the flagship humanoid robots created by Chinese robotics firm Unitree Robotics. However, two videos that have been circulating on social media since February 19 show a much less peaceful use for G1 robots. The videos show the robots taking part in what appears to be military training, armed with assault rifles. It turns out, however, that these videos are fake.
Robots at a shooting range where magazines appear out of thin air
The first video, which garnered more than 1.9 million views on X (check it out here and here), was said to show "Terminator" robots (as a social media user dubbed them) carrying out military manoeuvres at a shooting range. The video shows G1 robots – easy to identify because of the neon blue on their face – carrying out an operation using assault rifles.
However, as Tal Hagin, a researcher who studies disinformation, points out, there are a number of anomalies in this video that show it was generated by artificial intelligence.
Eleven seconds in, you can see that the ejection port cover on the robot’s assault rifle remains closed even when the weapon is being fired. This cover, which protects the ejector from humidity and dust, must open when bullets are being fired so that cartridge cases can be ejected. In the video, the cover remains closed or blinks but doesn’t eject any cartridge cases.
Another anomaly appears at 27 seconds when a magazine suddenly appears in the robot’s hand out of the blue when he is reloading his weapon.
An obstacle course… where the obstacles appear by magic
Another robot soldier video, which garnered more than a million views on X, is perhaps even more spectacular. It shows G1 robots participating in a training obstacle course. This video seems particularly realistic and doesn’t have any of the visual anomalies that often pop up in AI-generated videos, like objects or body parts appearing deformed or distorted.
However, this video, too, was generated by AI. To detect the anomalies, you need to compare each scene in the video with the one before it. Around 32 seconds in, for example, a robot dog leaps over a wooden panel in front of a pile of sandbags. However, this panel wasn’t anywhere to be seen at 30 seconds, which is a wider lens view of the same pile of sandbags. The AI magicked this object into being.
Videos from an account belonging to a creator of AI-generated images
Where are these videos from? It’s possible to find their creator by looking at the watermark on the training videos. They were made by a user who goes by "oukanghong" on the Chinese online video site Bilibili (here and here). Oukanghong user seems to specialise in creating AI-generated videos of robots.
The video of the robots making their way through an obstacle course has a note on it indicating that the video was made using artificial intelligence.
In one of the comments, oukanghong complains about seeing his videos taken out of context:
"People have been sharing my video while inventing rumours and using it out of context to spread false information.”
This article has been translated from the original in French by Brenna Daldorph.
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