Noetix has delivered just over 5,000 of its RMB 9,998 Bumi humanoids against a 10,000-unit goal for 2026

Noetix Robotics had delivered just over 5,000 Bumi humanoids by the end of September, National Business Daily (NBD) reported on Nov. 3. Founder Jiang Zheyuan set a goal early this year of selling "at least 10,000" in 2026. Close to 2,000 of the units delivered so far went to business customers. At RMB 9,998, Bumi was the first biped humanoid priced under RMB 10,000, according to NBD.

The price was meant for families. Jiang said early this year that Bumi should first go into homes, "especially families with children," for companionship, interaction and education. The money is coming from somewhere else. Asked at Bilibili's NEXT conference on Oct. 31 how sales split, Jiang told NBD that business and consumer buyers are "roughly half each," going by feel: consumers take more units, but business orders bring in more money. NBD's reading is that Bumi's commercial value still rests mostly on research, education and commercial display. To reach 10,000, Noetix has to deliver roughly as many robots again in the last three months of the year as it had delivered by the end of September, and it needs those institutional buyers to do it.

The consumer shelf is also getting crowded. In June, Unitree cut its R1 humanoid from RMB 39,900 to RMB 29,900. In September, AgiBot-controlled Qiyuan Robotics put its Q1 and T1 personal robots on sale from RMB 19,999 and has since rolled out its 5,000th personal robot. Bumi is still the cheapest of the three, and on Nov. 3 it was in the top 20 of JD.com's November smart-robot chart.

Noetix came late to the robot "brain," launching its embodied AI brand Scalabot only in September. Jiang argues that general large models can plan but cannot run on the robot itself, and that robot companies "will definitely lose" if they compete on compute and money with companies that only build large models. Jiang's bet is on data from homes and specific tasks. "We are a company, not a research lab," Jiang said. Noetix raised a Series B in March led by Chendao Capital, an investment platform linked to battery maker CATL, its tenth round to date.

The rest of the market is moving toward Bumi's end of the price range. On the same day, GGII forecast that humanoid prices in every size class will fall again in 2027 and that more than 15% of Chinese humanoid makers will fold or be bought within three years, as Robrief reported.