Humanoid Robots

How the chain fits together

A humanoid robot is built from joints, and each joint is a small electromechanical machine. The chain on this map runs from the magnets inside the motor to the finished robot:

• Rare-earth magnets go into the rotor of a servo or frameless torque motor.
• The motor drives a harmonic reducer in a rotary joint, or a planetary roller screw in a linear one.
• A joint actuator integrates motor, reducer or screw, encoder and driver in one unit.
• Compute chips run the robot's control and AI models.
• Dexterous hands and force sensors give it grip and touch.
• The finished humanoid robot is assembled from dozens of actuators plus the computing.

Tuopu says each humanoid needs dozens of actuators (2026 interim report, p. 12), so parts volumes run well above robot volumes. Industry data cited by Inovance put China's humanoid shipments at about 20,000 units in the first half of 2026, up 314% (2026 interim report, p. 18).

Where China is strong

The filings show real scale in the established parts and early volume in the new ones:

• Servo systems. Inovance says it holds about 35.2% of China's general-purpose servo system market (p. 11).
• Harmonic reducers. Leaderdrive sold 425,158 units in 2025, up 72.5%, though its margin has fallen each year (2025 annual report, corrected, pp. 35, 38).
• Frameless torque motors. Kinco shipped 113,600 in the first half of 2026, up 422.9% (2026 interim report, p. 15).
• Magnets. JL Mag says its capacity is 40,000 tonnes a year (2026 interim report, p. 10).
• Computing. Rockchip says its chips cover more robot categories than any other Chinese chip maker, and Horizon Robotics says its associate serves over 400 robot customers, but neither reports robot revenue (Rockchip 2026 interim report, p. 12).
• Sensing. Keli Sensing sold over 2,000 robot force sensors in the first half of 2026, more than in all of 2025 (2026 interim report, p. 9).
• Robots. Unitree says it shipped more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025 (prospectus, p. 34).

Where the weak points are

• Customers are rarely named. Only one filing on this map names a humanoid maker as a customer: Zhongda Leader lists AgiBot among its end customers, without saying which products. None names one for frameless motors, and none confirms the media reports on Tesla. Media reports link Tuopu and Sanhua to Tesla, but neither company has confirmed it.
• Robot revenue is still small for parts makers. Tuopu's robot actuators earned ¥14.0m in the first half of 2026, about 0.1% of its revenue, and Haozhi's robot components 1.5% of its revenue.
• The roller screw stage depends on imported machines. The listed suppliers are still in customer validation or small batches, and say the thread grinding machines they need are imported.
• Margins are under pressure in mature parts. Leaderdrive's gross margin has fallen each year, and Zhongda Leader's precision reducer margin was 14.6% in the first half of 2026.
• Computing is the least disclosed stage. No filing gives robot chip revenue, shipments or the share of imported chips.
• Policy. Magnet makers operate under export licensing rules, and Unitree warns that US trade rules could stop sales of its current models there.

Margins along the chain

The chart below sets the reported gross margins side by side. They range from 14.6% on Zhongda Leader's precision reducers to 66.0% at Horizon Robotics, whose figure is for a mostly automotive chip business. Of the robot makers, Unitree reports 60.1% and UBTech 44.7%, while the parts businesses shown sit between about 15% and 41%, with magnets and the reducer challenger at the low end. The bases differ, so this shows where the margin sits rather than a like-for-like ranking. For the finished robot, Unitree is the only maker that discloses a cost split: its average humanoid price fell 36.1% in 2025 to ¥166,400, its humanoid margin slipped from 69.3% to 63.2%, and materials were 81.7% of its cost of sales (prospectus, pp. 208, 211, 212). The humanoid robots page sets this out in full.

What decides who wins

Our view: the two robot makers that disclose margins both design their own joint drives, and we have no comparison from a maker that buys complete joints, so the filings cannot show that in-house design earns the margin. They do show that neither names an outside joint supplier. Parts makers with automotive-scale manufacturing, such as Inovance, Tuopu and Sanhua, are betting that robot builders will want a supplier that can hold tolerances at volume. The filings so far show that bet at an early stage.