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Danielle Popov

China has pulled far ahead in the race to build humanoid robots, issuing five times as many related patents as the United States over the past five years, Morgan Stanley said in its latest Robot Almanac.
In “Robot Almanac, Volume 3: Humanoids & Industrial Robots”, released on Tuesday as part of a six-volume series, Morgan Stanley said China recorded 7,705 humanoid patents over the past five years, compared with 1,561 in the US. Japan ranked next with 1,102, followed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) with 1,100.
WIPO is a specialised United Nations agency based in Geneva that works to promote international cooperation on intellectual property.
The report was produced by the Morgan Stanley Global Embodied AI Team and listed 32 authors. The analysis also highlighted the cost advantage China brings to the humanoid robot supply chain.
Morgan Stanley estimated that developing a supply chain for Tesla’s Optimus Gen 2 would cost almost three times as much without China’s participation.
In a hypothetical “non-China supply chain”, the cost of actuators – the mechanisms that move joints – would rise from about US$22,000 to US$58,000, while chip and software costs would climb from roughly US$3,000 to US$7,000.
In total, the bill of materials for the Optimus Gen 2 would surge from around US$46,000 to US$131,000, the report said, with similar jumps across key hardware components including dexterous hands, feet, vision systems and batteries.

Another major finding was that China accounted for 54 per cent of global industrial robot installations, more than the rest of the world combined, driven by the rapid expansion of its domestic robotics industry.
Morgan Stanley said major Chinese companies including BYD, Geely, Xpeng, NIO, Li Auto, Xiaomi and Midea were testing and deploying humanoids in factories and logistics settings.
Earlier this month, home appliance maker Midea unveiled a six-armed industrial humanoid robot scheduled to be deployed at its Wuxi washing machine plant by the end of December. Xpeng said it aimed to sell 1 million humanoid robots by 2030, with mass production to begin by the end of 2026.
China’s push into “embodied intelligence” has been underpinned by policy support and public-private collaboration aimed at accelerating innovation and deployment in industrial settings.
Morgan Stanley also said Unitree Robotics’ G1 humanoid was currently the most widely used humanoid robot globally.
Looking further ahead, its analysts estimated that 1 billion humanoid robots could be adopted worldwide by 2050, led by East Asia and the Pacific.


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China has issued five times the number of patents related to humanoid robots than the US, says Morgan Stanley


China has issued five times the number of patents related to humanoid robots than the US, says Morgan Stanley.


China packs a patent punch in the race to build humanoid robots

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China has issued five times the number of patents related to humanoid robots than the US, says Morgan Stanley

China has issued five times the number of patents related to humanoid robots than the US, says Morgan Stanley