China Humanoid Update(202606E3) Galbot, Galaxea, Kepler and SERES

**Uking Sun** (0:00)
Hello, welcome to the weekly update of China's physical AI industry, with a focus on humanoid robots, Galbot's ChatGPT moment. We start in Beijing with Galbot, co-founded by Professor Wang He. At the recent BAAI conference, Wang made a bold statement, claiming that humanoid robots have officially reached their AlphaGo and ChatGPT moments.
He highlighted Galbot's rapid progress in both specialized skills and general purpose models, showcasing autonomous robot tennis, dexterous hand control, and their proprietary AstraBrain model. Galbot claims its AstraBrain-WBC 0.5 is the world's first GPT style foundation model for humanoid robot cerebellum control. Trained on 20,000 hours of human motion data and a massive data set of 2 billion motion frames, this model enables real-time whole body motion control.
The data set spans everything from dancing and sports to industrial tasks and collaborative manipulation. The ultimate goal, to give humanoid robots highly generalizable and transferable movement skills. Financially, Galbot is a juggernaut. Back in March, they raised $362 million in a funding round backed heavily by state investors. A deal the company says makes it the highest valued unlisted firm in the humanoid robotics sector. If you're tracking China's physical AI space, Galbot is absolutely worth watching, purely because it's one of the few startups led by top-tier scientists. Speaking of top-tier talent, we have to talk about Galaxea, which just held its world developer conference in Beijing on June 16th. The company announced that its G05 foundation model now ranks among the world's leading embodied AI models. They also unveiled their brand new in-house bipedal humanoid robot, Kengo, and launched a million-hour real-world data initiative to accelerate machine learning. Galaxea claims it is now China's only embodied AI company that boasts both a top-tier AI model and a self-developed flagship humanoid robot. If you look closely at Galbot, they actually use a third-party unitary robot to showcase their AstraBrain. But of course, Galbot has its own robot supplied. Galaxea also emphasized that among all companies developing embodied AI brains, they have the strongest grip on complete machines and the supply chain. For example, 80% of their power units are either developed entirely in-house or co-developed with industry partners. According to Galaxea, humanoid robots will deliver actual production power in just three years. Also more importantly, Galaxea and Cathay Capital launched one billion yuan initiative to invest in 100 companies over the next five years. Interestingly, Shanghai's Agubot is the standout company leading the charge in this new ecosystem.
Next, let's head over to Shanghai's booming robotics cluster in Jiangjiang. Following its recent acquisition by a listed company, Kepler Robotics unveiled Kylin at the Jiangjiang Embodied AI Developer Conference. Named after a mythical Chinese creature, Kylin is a heavy-duty quadruped monster. It measures over 2 meters long, weighs 300 kilograms, and boasts a staggering maximum payload of 600 kilograms, all while running for 8 hours on a single charge. Kepler is making history here, likely becoming the first humanoid robotics startup in China to be absorbed into a public company. But Kylin isn't the only one flexing its muscles. If you're familiar with DAX AI Robot, you might know they just released a quadruped capable of carrying up to a massive 1,000 kilograms.
Founded by a former jd.com employee, DAX AI is sharply focused on heavy lifting for retail, logistics, and elderly care.
Among the newcomers, automotive player Seres has publicly unveiled its first humanoid robot, Xiaosai.
In a recent demonstration inside their smart factory, Xiaosai handled visitor greetings, visual recognition, voice interaction, and guided navigation. These features are nothing new to us, right? But this debut means another car maker into the humanoid sectors like Xiaomi and Xpeng. Seres has partnerships with Beihang University and Bytedance's Volcano Engine for embodied AI. Beyond humanoids, Seres is building a massive portfolio covering bipedal, quadruped, and wheeled platforms targeting factory logistics and quality control before moving to commercial deployment. This move is highly strategic. Seres is actively trying to diversify beyond the Huawei-backed Eito electric vehicle business, amid growing competition within Huawei's other car brands.
Quick Hits Unitree and Deep Robotics Unitree. Their official accounts highlighted a high-profile visit by a delegation led by the Myanmar president during the Dragon Boat Festival on June 19th, focusing on Unitree's latest technological achievements. Deep Robotics. Their Quadruped Robot took part in a flood prevention and emergency response drill in Hubei Province. The robot successfully completed embankment patrols, crack detection, and piping hazard responses, ranking first among all competing devices.
Finally, because last week was China's Dragon Boat Festival, we saw humanoid robots deployed in all kinds of festive marketing stunts. They were doing everything from wrapping zongzi, traditional sticky rice dumplings, to literally joining dragon boat races, which, if you ask me, is getting a bit ridiculous. These activities are actually being heavily promoted by the China Media Group to drum up hype for the World Humanoid Robot Games this August. However, I struggle to see the point of companies like Beijing Ex-Humanoid making such a big deal out of these media campaigns. It feels like pure showmanship, not disconnected from practical real-world applications. Furthermore, Beijing Ex-Humanoid constantly emphasizes that it represents the national team in physical AI, implying that its backing comes heavily from state investment rather than market-driven investors. For instance, their official WeChat account recently announced that China Post and Beijing Ex-Humanoid are jointly releasing a special stamp dedicated to physical AI.