Standard Bots hit a $1bn valuation in New York the same week the Pentagon designated Unitree a Chinese military company. The capital and the cordon arrived together, and not only in the US.
EngineAI filed confidentially for a HK IPO on June 12. After Unitree’s STAR listing, EngineAI is the latest humanoid maker to file.
Founded in 2023, EngineAI was valued above Rmb10bn (~$1.4bn) in the latest private round in April. Luxshare, one of Apple’s largest assemblers, is a strategic investor.
EngineAI shipped ~400 units in 2025 and is targeting 4,000-5,000 in 2026, a 10x scale-up. For context, in 2025, Unitree shipped 5,500, AgiBot 5,200, UBTech 1,079 full-size units.
EngineAI’s PM01 humanoid model starts at $25.5K, priced similar to AgiBot’s A2 and Dobot’s Atom, not Unitree’s sub-Rmb 100K developer tier.
The company is founded by Zhao Tongyang, who formerly led XPeng’s robotics team.
Capital is flooding into Physical AI on both sides of the Pacific. On top of that, at least two other humanoid startups, Galbot, AgiBot, dexterous hand startups PaXini and LinkerBot, robot vacuum cleaner market leader Dreame are all reported to be eyeing Hong Kong IPO in 2026.
Down the Stack
Funding spree. Standard Bots, an industrial robotics company with US manufacturing base in Glen Cove, NY (expanding to 70k sq ft), raised at $1bn valuation, led by RoboStrategy and General Catalyst. The company is claiming to reach 10% of US industrial robots deployment this year. Neura, an industrial robotics company from Germany, raised up to $1.4bn at $7bn valuation, with investors including Tether, Qualcomm Technologies, Amazon, NVIDIA, Bosch and Schaeffler. The company claims the funding round to be Europe’s largest ever for a full-stack robotics company. Generalist, building foundation models for robotics, reached a $2bn valuation at a round led by Radical Ventures, with participation from 8VC, Union Square Ventures. Physical Intelligence, another robotics foundation model lab, was reportedly in talks at a $11bn valuation in March 2026; its last closed round was at $5.6bn.
Policy read. Washington is hardening on protectionism and national security. GUARD Act, introduced on Jun 3, requires review of Chinese/foreign-adversary robots (humanoids and quadrupeds). Our earlier analysis here. The Pentagon updated its Chinese military companies list on June 8. DoD added Unitree, plus Alibaba, Baidu, BYD, NIO, WuXi AppTec, lidar maker RoboSense, expanding the roster from 134 to 188 firms. Under Section 805 of the FY24 NDAA, DoD can’t enter or renew direct contracts with listed companies starting June 30, 2026. The two differ in scope: the GUARD Act, if passed, would reach consumer and commercial use, while the Chinese military companies list affects only DoD contracting.
Disturbingly lifelike. UBTech’s consumer brand UWorld opened preorders on June 2, for a hyper-realistic companion. Priced at ~$30K, they received 2,100 deposits ($450 each) in week one. The product ships on June 30. Droidup, a Shanghai-based startup, unveiled Moya in February, a fully biomimetic humanoid whose skin holds body temperature. It costs $173,000 and is expected to ship late 2026.
Training data ranked. Pete Florence, CEO of Generalist, ranked the data types used to train robotics models. A summary here. And here is a map of various data types and tradeoffs we shared earlier this week.
