The robot industry is experiencing a series of "China moments".

The 2025 World Robot Conference (WRC) was held in Beijing from August 8th to 12th. According to statistics, the event gathered over 1,500 exhibits from more than 200 companies, featuring over 100 newly launched products and 50 humanoid robot manufacturers, setting a new record for similar exhibitions.

During the three-day keynote forum from August 8th to 11th, academicians, experts, representatives of international organizations, and top business leaders from around the world convened to discuss the three major themes of robot "industry development," "innovative applications," and "technology integration".

During this period, Lanfu Finance observed four prominent Chinese figures whose representative efforts are propelling China to become a leading global smart manufacturing powerhouse.

First Face: Wang Xingxing, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Unitree Robotics

In the evolution of the robot industry, enterprises, as key drivers of innovation and creation, have a natural aptitude for technological, product, and industrial advancements, serving as the "question setters," "answerers," and "evaluators" of scientific, technological, and industrial progress.

Wang Xingxing, the founder, CEO, and CTO of Hangzhou Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd., pioneered the development of the high-performance small quadruped robot XDog, powered by low-cost outer rotor brushless motors, during his master's degree. In 2016, Unitree Robotics was established, becoming the world's first company to publicly retail high-performance quadruped robots, leading the global market in sales and significantly advancing the marketization of such robots worldwide. He has been invited to speak at prestigious international robot conferences such as the ICRA 2018~2022 Legged Robots Forum and has led his team to secure over 200 domestic and international patents, bringing the company's products to prominent stages like CCTV's Spring Festival Gala and the Super Bowl in the United States.

At the conference, Unitree's fighting robot arena was an exhilarating spectacle, showcasing high-difficulty maneuvers like punch-kick combinations and dodges, demonstrating exceptional motion control and balance capabilities fueled by Unitree's millisecond response control system. This was not merely a competition of performance but also a showcase of human-robot collaboration.

Under the topic "Opportunities and Challenges for the Large-scale Development of the Robot Industry," Wang Xingxing shared his insights. He stated that a common misconception regarding robot bodies blames the current lack of large-scale applications or limited functionality on insufficient hardware or excessive costs. However, while existing hardware still requires continuous optimization, it already possesses basic usability. The real bottleneck lies in the immaturity of embodied intelligence, which is the core factor restricting the widespread adoption of humanoid robots. Currently, the primary global issue is the model problem, not the data problem, and the model architecture of embodied intelligent robots needs improvement.

Second Face: Jiang Guangzhi, Director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology

Amid a new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation, many countries and regions have elevated the development of the humanoid robot industry to a national strategic level. The Chinese government places great importance on the development of the robot industry, continuously strengthening the "soft environment" and expanding "hard support" to enable countless entrepreneurs to focus on their endeavors with peace of mind.

In this wave of innovation, Beijing has continually increased support for the development of the robot industry, striving to create a robot innovation hub with international influence. Since 2019, two rounds of three-year action plans have been successively introduced. Beijing is fully committed to building a global source of robot technology innovation, an application demonstration hub, and a clustering area for high-end industries.

At the conference, Jiang Guangzhi unveiled the "Achievements of Beijing's Robot 'Double Hundred Project.'" According to his introduction, Beijing has currently nurtured 57 specialized, innovative, and high-tech small giant robot enterprises, obtained 33 surgical robot registration certificates, and gathered 30 humanoid robot manufacturers, all ranking first in the country.

By implementing the "Hundred New Robot Products Project," focusing on the robot "1+4" product system with humanoid robots as the core area for planning and layout, it drives the leapfrog development of collaborative, medical, special, and logistics robots, the four dominant products. Support has been provided for the creation of 200 innovative robot products across 12 categories, and a high-end product system has taken shape. By implementing the "Hundred Application Scenario Demonstration Project," leveraging Beijing's advantage of abundant scenarios in megacities, it intensifies scenario innovation and supply-demand matching, supporting the first trial, first use, and iterative upgrade of robot innovative products in 134 scenarios across 11 fields, continuously expanding the depth and breadth of applications.

Next, Beijing will thoroughly summarize the experiences and practices of the "Double Hundred Project," focusing on enterprise technological innovation and industrial application needs, consistently exerting efforts on both innovative products and high-value scenarios, continuously optimizing the industrial development environment, serving the rapid development of the robot industry, further strengthening the driving capability of complete machines, further accelerating the opening of scenarios across the board, and further optimizing the guarantee of industrial elements to serve the rapid development of the robot industry.

Third Face: Ni Guangnan, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering

The rise of China's intelligent robots represents a technological marathon from catching up to leading. A vast number of engineering talents from the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, along with their research prowess, are the driving force behind the entire industry's development.

Ni Guangnan is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been engaged in the research and development of computers and their applications, participating in the development of China's first self-designed electronic tube computer (119 machine). In the 1960s and 1970s, he conducted research on Chinese character processing and character recognition, pioneering the application of association function in Chinese character input. As the first chief engineer of Lenovo Group, he presided over the research and development of the Lenovo Chinese character card and microcomputer, which won the first prize of the National Scientific and Technological Progress Award in 1988 and 1992, respectively. In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the China Society for Chinese Information Processing; in 2015, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the China Computer Federation.

In his speech titled "'AI + Spatial Computing' Enables Machines to Understand the World," Ni Guangnan stated that "AI + Spatial Computing" has opened up a new paradigm of development, transitioning from two-dimensional to three-dimensional interaction. As a novel way of computing, spatial computing serves as a bridge between the physical and digital worlds, reshaping the way humans, machines, and the world interact and is one of the key core technologies driving the implementation of robots.

In the current era where artificial intelligence leads the transformation of technological paradigms, under the national implementation of the "AI+" action, it is imperative to propel the development of robots towards AI+ robots to better harness their role as a new productive force. To meet this demand, the key lies in enhancing robot intelligent evaluation, utilizing a brain-eye-action collaborative system to elevate the intelligence level of robots, truly enabling robots to see, understand, and act in the world.

Fourth Face: Cao Wei, Partner at BlueRun Ventures

Finance is like water, and enterprises are like boats. The industry generally agrees that embodied intelligence/humanoid robots, as future industries, are still in their nascent stage of development and require continuous attention and careful nurturing from capital. In 2025, "patient capital," "intelligent robots," and "embodied intelligence" were jointly included in this year's government work report: Improve the differentiated supervision system for venture capital funds, strengthen policy-based financial support, accelerate the development of venture capital, and reinforce patient capital.

Amid the new wave of generative AI, BlueRun Ventures has frequently appeared in leading projects and is often the first-round or early-stage investor. Since 2021, BlueRun has successively invested in large model companies such as West Lake Xinchen and Dark Moon, as well as AI application companies like Genspark, Muyanzhiyu, and Aiyuweiwu. In the embodied intelligence field, BlueRun has been particularly aggressive, investing in Zhiyuan Robotics, Galaxy General, and Lingchu Intelligence. Notably, BlueRun has invested in Zhiyuan Robotics twice, and both Galaxy and Lingchu received investments at the angel stage.

As a partner at BlueRun Ventures, Cao Wei has participated in the investment of star (humanoid) robot startups such as Galaxy General Robotics, Zhiyuan Robotics, and Gaoxian Robotics. In his view, embodied intelligence, including humanoid robots, will enter a "report card" window period in the second half of 2025, and whether the enthusiasm for this round of funding can continue hinges on the "report card results" of these enterprises.

Cao Wei firmly believes that general robots driven by embodied intelligence will remain a technology theme worthy of attention in the capital market in the next decade. As society's attention and expectations for embodied intelligence and humanoid robots far exceed the current level of technological development, a decline in investment market sentiment is foreseeable, but this does not detract from the upward spiral development trend of this emerging technology.

On August 11th, a special session for robot project roadshows and investment and financing matchmaking was held concurrently in Yizhuang, Beijing. This roadshow was jointly hosted by First Round Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Source Code Capital, and the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing Industry Bureau, meticulously selecting 11 high-potential star projects. The aim was to gather industrial resources, capital strength, and innovative wisdom to jointly build a new ecosystem for the robot industry. It is reported that investors from over 100 leading investment institutions attended the event.