'ChatGPT' Robotics Moment in 2025

World Models, Humanoids, Synthetic Data and Improved fine motor hand and agility marks a new beginning. 🤖 New Robot Arms race begins in 2025. With Deep Dive 🧐 on Unitree.

The G1 humanoid robot by Unitree robotics.

The so-called ‘ChatGPT’ moment in robotics is nearly here roughly occuring in the 2025-2030 period. New training capabilities due to world models with innovations like Nvidia’s Cosmos and the collaboration like Genesis open up faster training capabilities using synthetic data that translates well for training robots and physical AI software that translates well to the real world.

This ChatGPT moment for robotics is enabled by a few trends:

• Improvements in the fine-motor control of the hands (arms) of general purpose Humanoid robotics

• Improvements in the agility of robots (e.g. Unitree, Boston Dynamics)

• Better world models for synthetic data training environments

• More funding for robotics, AI drones and national defense use cases

• Emergence of fast-learning robots due to physical AI advances

You can read our latest report that goes into some more detail:

Manufacturing

Since CES 2025, there’s been evidence of this acceleration in robotics, mostly occurring in China. What’s clear is robots are also powering manufacturing more and more.

In January 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that U.S. manufacturers had more than 600,000 vacancies.

ABI Research last week predicted that the global installed base of commercial and industrial robots could reach 16.3 million in 2030 as manufacturers attempt to offset the baby boomer exodus.

For every 10,000 employees, the number of manufacturing robots is highest in countries like 🇰🇷 South Korea, 🇸🇬 Singapore, 🇩🇪 Germany, 🇯🇵 Japan, 🇨🇳 China and so forth. Outside of Germany and Sweden, the U.S. and the West lags behind. The global average for the ratio of industrial robots to employees was 151 in 2023, according to the International Federation of Robotics. This number is only going to increase and one day, drastically. The year it increases the most and the fastest, is officially when the ChatGPT moment for robotics has arrived.

Consolidation & Warehouse Automation

This month also Symbotic said that it will acquire Walmart Inc.’s Advanced Systems and Robotics business for $200 million. Symbotic will construct and implement an advanced solution powered by its AI and robotics platform. Symbotic will spearhead a development programme financed by Walmart, which is designed to refine existing online order fulfilment systems and engineer novel solutions tailored to meet the evolving demands of current and prospective customers. If all goes well, Walmart will pay Symbotic $520m, including an upfront payment of $230m upon closing.

Founded in 2007, Symbotic has developed robots, software, and artificial intelligence serving retail, wholesale, and food and beverage companies. The stock SYM 0.00%↑ is one of the best pure play robotics companies on the public market in my opinion as the company approaches a valuation of nearly $20 Billion.

However the real story in robotics in this period are humanoid robots and what Chinese robotic startups are doing. OpenAI is also hiring for roles to kickstart their robotics program. While Nvidia has been involved in emerging tech like AVs, Quantum computing and robotics Physical AI environments for a while, I believe the future of robotics is by far the biggest and nearest play.

The AI arms race between the U.S. and China isn’t just about LLM but AI-controlled robots. With China’s vastly superior manufacturing capabilities and efficiency, it will be difficult for the U.S. to truly innovate ahead of them, if the EV market was anything to go by.

Unitree’s G1 starts at $16,000 US, not a price point Figure or Tesla will be able to match anytime soon. Time permitting I cover robot news on OK, Robot.

G1 humanoid robot and the Spot-like Go2 robot dog both were featured prominently at CES 2025. Along with several stunt videos displaying their impressive feats of agility. When Nvidia announced Cosmos, they hinted that Nvidia improved world models for robotics training will usher in a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics and it will happen in the second half of the 2020s. Compared to Generative AI’s historical timeline, we are at about 2018 for robotics.

Grace Shao

a writer and researcher based in Hong Kong is well positioned to dig deep into this trend of Chinese roboti makers. Her Newsletter AI Proem, is one of the fastest growing debut Newsletters around AI, Geopolitics, Datacenters and innovation and a leading source on AI infrastructure in China and deep dives on Chinese tech companies and startups.

• Physical AI’s ChatGPT “moment”: A Closer Look at Embodied AI Robots

• China's 'Eastern Data and Western Computing': State Policies and Affordable Energy Solutions Push AI Infrastructure Ahead

Drones and Robots for National Defense

China is so far ahead in drone manufacturing now there is a push to weaponize robots for national defense in both the U.S. and China. Anduril’s Arsenal-1 hyperscale plant in Ohio and Palantir’s $200 million funding of drone-startup Shield AI signals a new era.

Onlookers have noticed that Unitree’s robots appear even more agile than Hyundai owned Boston Dynamics that look bulky in comparison. You are indeed not imagining things. The full extent of China’s push into humanoid robots is also not really covered by the Western media.

I am referring to the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center’s Tiangong, among others. Tiangong, an electrically-driven general-purpose humanoid that's capable of stable running at 6 km/h, while also able to tackle slopes and stairs in "blind conditions” was unveiled in May, 2024.

Investors and U.S. analysts that assume Tesla is way ahead in humanoid robotics aren’t necessarily right. Developed by Beijing-based National and Local Co-built Embodied AI Robotics Innovation Center, Tiangong is claimed to be the first full-sized humanoid robot driven purely by electric power. Furthermore China competes favorably on price of course, where Unitree’s Go2 robodog is just $1,600. This is key when it comes to these robots being deploy in conflict zones which is already occurring in the Ukraine. Asymmetric warfare now means cheap drones and cheap robot dogs are part of the kill-loop. That being the case, the U.S. is going to have to increase spending on robotics in the 2025 to 2030 period drastically to keep up with China’s current capabilities and rate of improvements.

The Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center was set up in November, 2023. The company is a joint venture from Beijing Yizhuang Investment Holdings Limited, UBTech Robotics, Xiaomi, and Beijing Jingcheng Machinery Electric. We are starting to see these Government and Corporate coalitions as well in the U.S. increasingly in 2025 (e.g. Stargate for datacenters). We’ll talk more about Stargate in another future article.

List of Robot Conferences on the Agenda in 2025

• RoboCup German Open: 12–16 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY

• German Robotics Conference: 13–15 March 2025, NUREMBERG, GERMANY

• RoboSoft 2025: 23–26 April 2025, LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND

• ICUAS 2025: 14–17 May 2025, CHARLOTTE, NC

• ICRA 2025: 19–23 May 2025, ATLANTA, GA

• IEEE RCAR 2025: 1–6 June 2025, TOYAMA, JAPAN

• RSS 2025: 21–25 June 2025, LOS ANGELES

• IAS 2025: 30 June–4 July 2025, GENOA, ITALY

• ICRES 2025: 3–4 July 2025, PORTO, PORTUGAL

• IEEE World Haptics: 8–11 July 2025, SUWON, KOREA

• IFAC Symposium on Robotics: 15–18 July 2025, PARIS

• RoboCup 2025: 15–21 July 2025, BAHIA, BRAZIL

So this newfound agility in robots is also a bit unexpected. Among other approaches, researchers have enabled China’s Unitree humanoid robot G1 to master the art of waltzing by mirroring human movements. For this, a team at the University of California, San Diego, has developed ExBody2, an AI system enabling robots to mimic and perform human movements with lifelike fluidity.

ExBody2, tested on two humanoid robots, smoothly performed tasks from walking and crouching to complex moves like a dance routine, throwing punches, and waltzing.

So it’s not just Cosmos, Genesis, ExBody2 but so much that is occurring together in the robotics space both in the U.S. and China that’s leading to more capable robots and the foundations for general purpose humanoid robots. If I had to guess what year will officially be the ChatGPT moment for Robotics, I’d say 2029. The foundations are now in place and the national security competition between the U.S. and China accelerates this timeline. Competition is good for innovation.

I asked Grace Shao to dig into Unitree more for us, and her research and investigative analysis is highly valued.

Introducing Unitree, China’s leading AI-embodied Robotics Company

By

Grace Shao

, of the Newsletter AI Proem, January 2025.

Articles by AI Proem

• Behind the AI Arms Race: U.S. vs. China Cloud Computing

• Made in China AI Apps That You Are Using - Developed by ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, Meitu, BaiChuan, MoonShot AI, Baichuan AI, MiniMax

• Deep Dive: Is Huawei like China’s Nvidia plus Google?

This year, at CES, which just wrapped up earlier in the month, it was all about AI integration into hardware, from wearables to AI-empowered furniture to robots! And not the non-sexy machinery robots that warehouses have all adopted—the fun ones, the ones we see in sci-fi movies.

There were 3,800 exhibitors at CES 2025, 1500 of whom were from China. If people said AI integration was still nascent in 2024, 2025 showed concepts becoming reality. Intelligent robotics completely dominated the showrooms, showcasing the rapid advancements in AI integration, from robotic dogs to AMRs to cleaning, agricultural, and compassion robots. Physical AI is having a ChatGPT moment.

That brings me to today's protagonist: the Chinese robotics firm Unitree and its robot dogs, which completely stole the show and have been the subject of much hype and craze on social media.

[The four American business/tech executives/ investors, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, Gavin Baker, and David Friedberg (minus David Sacks), discussed the impressiveness of the Unitree robots and how some of them initially thought the videos were AI-generated during their 2025 Predictions episode on the All-In Podcast. ]

Alas, the conclusion is that 2025 will be a big year for AI-embodied robots.

Screenshot of Unitree’s demo video

Who is Unitree Robotics 宇树科技?