China and the United States: What the Humanoid Production Numbers Actually Show
A documented comparison of Chinese and US humanoid production, shipments, factory capacity, supply chains, orders, pilots and government support.
Introduction
China and the United States report humanoid progress in incompatible units. Unitree says it shipped more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025 and produced more than 6,500. AgiBot says its 15,000th robot left the production line in June 2026, while also citing 5,168 shipments for 2025 from Omdia. Figure says it had delivered more than 350 Figure 03 robots by April 2026. Agility’s Oregon RoboFab advertises peak capacity of 10,000 Digit robots per year, but capacity is not output.
This article keeps those categories separate. A factory nameplate is production capacity. A machine leaving a line is manufactured. A delivered machine has reached a recipient. A purchase order can be paid, conditional or non-binding. A pilot agreement can involve one robot and no sale. Government targets are policy, not shipments. With those definitions, China has the strongest disclosed volume evidence, while US companies publish more customer-specific operating detail in a smaller number of programs. Neither country provides a complete audited national total.
Key findings
- China leads the publicly disclosed unit counts reviewed here, driven by Unitree and AgiBot figures that exceed the disclosed output of individual US rivals.
- US manufacturers publish substantial planned capacity, but Figure’s 350-plus delivered Figure 03 units are the clearest recent US delivery number found.
- Unitree explicitly separates 2025 output from shipments, preventing a common mistake in industry comparisons.
- AgiBot’s 15,000th production-line milestone covers its robot portfolio and should not automatically be read as 15,000 full-size humanoids delivered to paying customers.
- China has a denser domestic component and manufacturing ecosystem; the US advantage is concentrated in frontier AI, capital and named industrial partnerships.
Documented production evidence by country
Numbers retain the scope and wording of the source. They are not combined into an audited national total.
| Metric | China | United States | What can be concluded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Units shipped | Unitree: more than 5,500 humanoids shipped in 2025. AgiBot/Omdia: 5,168 units shipped in 2025. Portfolio overlap is not assumed. | No complete national total. Figure: more than 350 Figure 03 units delivered by April 2026. | China has larger disclosed company-level shipment figures, but reporting scopes differ. |
| Units manufactured | Unitree: more than 6,500 humanoids produced in 2025. AgiBot: 15,000th robot off its line in June 2026 across its product portfolio. | Figure demonstrates one Figure 03 per hour and reports deliveries; Tesla output remains undisclosed. | Manufactured is not the same as shipped or deployed. |
| Production capacity | Multiple Chinese factories announce lines and annual targets; comparable audited utilization is unavailable. | Agility RoboFab states peak annual capacity of 10,000 Digit robots. Figure BotQ initially targeted 12,000 units per year. | Nameplate capacity shows equipment and process ambition, not actual annual output. |
| Paid orders | Some Chinese companies announce order values or large unit totals, but payment and binding terms are often unclear. | Agility has cited commercial orders with conditions; detailed customer payment schedules are private. | Order headlines cannot be added to shipment totals. |
| Pilots | Broad automotive trials involving UBTECH, AgiBot and other suppliers are public, frequently without robot counts or shift data. | BMW, GXO, Schaeffler, Mercedes-Benz, Jabil, Toyota and Hyundai programs are named in official announcements. | The US sample offers stronger customer-specific documentation, not necessarily greater volume. |
| Government support | National and local policy explicitly promotes humanoids, innovation centers, standards and industrial clusters. | Federal support is distributed across research, defense, manufacturing and AI programs; no single comparable national humanoid plan was found. | Policy architecture differs and cannot be converted directly into units. |
Major manufacturers and the latest quantified evidence
A blank figure means the company did not publish a comparable current number in the primary sources reviewed.
| Country | Manufacturer | Published product or factory evidence | Classification |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | Unitree | More than 5,500 humanoid shipments and more than 6,500 units produced in 2025, according to its clarification. | Units shipped and manufactured; company-reported |
| China | AgiBot | 15,000th robot production-line milestone in June 2026; cites 5,168 shipments in 2025 from Omdia. | Portfolio production milestone and analyst shipment estimate |
| China | UBTECH | Walker industrial programs and annual-report disclosures; exact comparable shipped-humanoid total not used here. | Pilots, orders and company reporting; scope varies |
| China | Fourier Intelligence | GR-series commercial and research programs; current audited annual output not disclosed. | Product availability and deployments, no comparable total |
| United States | Figure AI | More than 350 Figure 03 units delivered by April 2026; one-unit-per-hour line demonstrated. | Delivered units and demonstrated line rate; company-reported |
| United States | Agility Robotics | RoboFab peak capacity of 10,000 per year; customer work documented. | Capacity and deployment, not 10,000 units produced |
| United States | Tesla | Large production goals discussed by executives, but current completed units and external shipments are not publicly disclosed. | Planned capacity or internal production claim |
| United States | 1X Technologies | NEO Factory announced for consumer production; completed 2026 deliveries not yet quantified. | Planned production and preorder program |
| United States | Boston Dynamics | Production-ready Atlas and a Hyundai fleet scheduled for 2026. | Announced customer shipment; completed count not public |
| United States | Apptronik | Manufacturing partnerships and customer pilots; Apollo unit output not public. | Pilot and scaling agreement |
Production, shipment and deployment are different ledgers
Unitree’s clarification is unusually useful because it publishes two numbers: output above 6,500 and shipments above 5,500 for 2025. The gap can include inventory, internal units, timing and channel stock. AgiBot’s 15,000th robot milestone is a production-line counter across a portfolio. It does not prove that 15,000 full-size humanoids were paid for, delivered or operating in factories.
Figure’s 350-plus figure is described as delivered Figure 03 units. Agility’s 10,000 figure is peak annual factory capacity. These values answer different questions and cannot be placed in one bar chart labeled “robots produced” without distortion. A reliable comparison therefore keeps a ledger for capacity, manufactured units, shipments, deliveries, orders and active deployments.
China’s advantage begins below the final assembly line
China’s robotics ecosystem sits near large domestic industries for batteries, electric motors, power electronics, precision machining, cameras and contract manufacturing. Humanoid suppliers can source or iterate many subsystems inside regional clusters. Government policy also names humanoids as a strategic emerging sector and supports innovation centers, standards and pilot applications.
That proximity does not mean every critical component is domestic or equivalent. High-end reducers, force-torque sensors, encoders, tactile skins, GPUs and precision bearings can still depend on specialist suppliers or imports. The useful claim is supply-chain density and manufacturing speed, not complete technological self-sufficiency.
The US advantage is concentrated in AI and customer integration
US companies have access to frontier multimodal models, large cloud and chip ecosystems, deep venture financing and industrial customers willing to run pilots. Figure’s Helix, Apptronik’s partnership with Google DeepMind and NVIDIA’s humanoid platform work illustrate this concentration. Customer announcements often describe the exact task, site and partner even when unit counts remain private.
The manufacturing base is less uniform. Agility operates a dedicated factory in Oregon, Figure runs BotQ and 1X announced a NEO factory, while other companies depend on contract manufacturers or development lines. Large goals from executives should be recorded as targets until production and delivery data appear.
Orders and memorandums are the noisiest numbers
A supplier may announce a framework order, intended purchase, memorandum or potential fleet value before acceptance testing, financing and delivery schedules are complete. Chinese and US announcements both use this language. An order count is strongest when the source identifies a binding customer, paid amount, delivery window and product configuration. Most public releases omit at least one of those fields.
This article therefore does not convert quoted order value into robot units and does not treat a memorandum as a sale. It also avoids adding pilots across companies because one “pilot” can mean a single supervised robot for weeks while another means several robots in recurring operations.
What would make the comparison auditable
The industry needs common quarterly fields: completed units by model, external shipments, accepted deliveries, customer-active units, paid orders, cancellations, average operating hours and human-intervention rate. Production capacity should include utilization and yield. Deployment reports should identify the task, site, fleet size and observation period.
Until companies publish those fields, national league tables will remain estimates assembled from incompatible announcements. The present evidence supports a Chinese volume lead, but not a precise national ratio or a claim that every shipped unit is doing economically useful work.
Limitations and missing information
- No audited national registry reports humanoid output for either country.
- Unitree, AgiBot and Figure figures are company-reported or based on cited industry analysis, not a common financial standard.
- Product portfolios differ: small educational bipeds, full-size humanoids and wheeled systems may be counted differently.
- Chinese order releases often omit binding terms; US pilot releases often omit unit counts and operating hours.
- Component-country attribution is difficult because finished robots contain globally sourced chips, sensors, reducers and software.
Conclusion
China holds the stronger documented volume position in mid-2026. Unitree’s separate shipment and output figures and AgiBot’s production-line milestone are larger than the current company-level delivery numbers publicly disclosed by US manufacturers. China also benefits from dense component and contract-manufacturing clusters plus explicit industrial policy. The exact margin remains unknown because companies count different robot sizes and product families.
The United States has not matched those disclosed volumes, but it has stronger public evidence around several named customer workflows, frontier model partnerships and dedicated factories with substantial planned capacity. Figure’s delivery count and BMW documentation are the clearest current examples; Agility’s RoboFab is a capacity asset, not proof of 10,000 annual units. The defensible conclusion is a Chinese lead in reported unit volume and a US concentration in AI, capital and customer integration, with neither side yet providing an audited national production ledger.
Frequently asked questions
Does China produce more humanoid robots than the United States?
The company-level figures reviewed in July 2026 support a Chinese lead in disclosed production and shipment volume. Unitree alone reports more than 5,500 humanoid shipments in 2025. The United States lacks a comparable national total, and Figure reports more than 350 Figure 03 deliveries. The exact country ratio cannot be calculated reliably from incompatible disclosures.
Did AgiBot deliver 15,000 humanoid robots?
AgiBot announced that its 15,000th robot came off the production line in June 2026. That is a manufacturing milestone across its product portfolio, not proof that 15,000 full-size humanoids were delivered to paying customers. The company separately cited an Omdia estimate of 5,168 shipments for 2025, which should not be merged with the production-line counter.
Is factory capacity the same as robot production?
No. Agility’s RoboFab peak capacity of 10,000 robots per year and Figure’s initial BotQ target describe what a facility is designed to support. Actual production depends on orders, suppliers, labor, yield and line utilization. A credible production comparison uses completed units, while capacity belongs in a separate column.
Why are announced orders not counted as shipments?
An announcement may describe a memorandum, framework agreement, conditional purchase or intended fleet. Payment, acceptance testing and delivery can occur later or never. Shipments require a robot to leave the supplier for a recipient, and deployment requires evidence that it is operating. Those stages have different commercial and technical meaning.
Which country has the stronger humanoid supply chain?
China has the denser nearby manufacturing ecosystem for motors, batteries, machining, electronics and final assembly. The United States is stronger in several frontier AI, chip-design and software layers. Neither ecosystem is fully independent: both rely on global suppliers for selected sensors, semiconductors, reducers, bearings and production equipment.
Are government targets included in production totals?
No. Chinese policy documents and local plans can direct funding, standards and pilot programs, but a target is not a manufactured unit. US research or industrial grants are also not output. Policy is analyzed as an enabling condition and kept separate from factories, shipped robots, paid orders and active deployments.
Sources and methodology
Primary manufacturer pages were used for company counts, production milestones, line rates, factory capacity and deployment statements. Chinese government publications were used to document policy direction. Every number was assigned to one category: capacity, manufactured, shipped, delivered, ordered, piloted or deployed.
The comparison was verified July 11, 2026. No market forecast was converted into actual production, and overlapping company or analyst totals were not added into a national sum.
- Clarification Regarding Unitree’s 2025 Sales Data — Unitree Robotics · 2026
- AgiBot 15,000th Production Milestone — AgiBot · June 2026
- AgiBot News and Production Updates — AgiBot · accessed July 11, 2026
- UBTECH 2025 Annual Report — UBTECH Robotics · 2026
- China sets sights on humanoid robots — State Council of the People’s Republic of China · October 11, 2024
- Ramping Figure 03 Production — Figure AI · April 29, 2026
- Agility company and RoboFab — Agility Robotics · accessed July 11, 2026
- NEO Factory — 1X Technologies · accessed July 11, 2026
- Atlas production-ready announcement — Boston Dynamics · January 5, 2026
- Tesla AI and Robotics — Tesla · accessed July 11, 2026
Related TechniaHQ guides
Official image recommendations
- A split industrial scene showing verified Chinese and US humanoid production lines, labeled by company and metric.
China and United States humanoid robot production lines compared with shipment and capacity labels — Official manufacturer media - Unitree humanoid production and shipment clarification visual.
Unitree humanoid robots arranged at a manufacturing facility — Unitree Robotics - AgiBot production line at the 15,000th robot milestone.
AgiBot robot production line marking its fifteen-thousandth unit milestone — AgiBot - Figure BotQ assembly line for Figure 03.
Figure 03 humanoid robots moving through the BotQ production line — Figure AI - Six separate bars for capacity, manufactured, shipped, delivered, ordered and deployed units.
Chart explaining the difference between humanoid robot capacity, production, shipments, deliveries, orders and deployments — TechniaHQ original graphic
Fact-check report
Verified: July 11, 2026
Confirmed
- Unitree separates more than 6,500 produced from more than 5,500 shipped in 2025.
- Figure reports more than 350 Figure 03 units delivered by April 2026.
- Agility’s 10,000 figure is factory peak capacity, not annual output.
Not confirmed or incomplete
- No audited 2025 or 2026 national humanoid production total exists for either country.
- The binding status and payment terms of many announced orders are not public.
- AgiBot’s 15,000 milestone cannot be reduced to full-size humanoids delivered without a model breakdown.
Fast-changing information
- 2026 production counters, new factories, order conversions and government programs can change monthly.