Yongda Auto, a Hong Kong-listed luxury car dealer group, will buy 400 U1 Pro humanoids from UBTECH for delivery this year. Yongda's role in the deal is selling, leasing and servicing robots, so the order is a bet on a retail channel more than on robots working in showrooms.
Xixuan Chuangzhi, a chip company that GPU maker MetaX and humanoid maker UBTECH set up in May, raised RMB 500 million in an angel round co-led by Granite Asia and Matrix Partners China. Its first robot chip is due in 2028, against an NVIDIA part customers are designing in today.
UBTECH signed a strategic agreement with Tianyi Telecom Terminals, China Telecom's device subsidiary, with a three-year goal of 100,000 humanoids and a million home companion robots. The number is written as an industry target; what UBTECH gets now is a consumer sales channel it has never had.