robots

The 2026 World Physics AI Conference and Yushu Partner Ecosystem Conference was held today in Hangzhou. Wang Xingxing, Chairman, General Manager, and Chief Technology Officer of the robotics company Yushu Technology, stated in his keynote speech that the most critical challenge for embodied intelligence, surpassing the ChatGPT moment, is the alignment of AI model inputs and outputs with real robots.Wang Xingxing mentioned that for top large model companies, in a sense, they have basically achieved self-evolution of models internally, where models can write programs and collect data on their own, and humans only need to provide appropriate guidance and participation. He also noted that it usually takes 5 to 10 years for technological breakthroughs to diffuse to general users, so the external perception is not that profound, while physical AI has already shown signs of being penetrated.

Tesla (TSLA.O) announced that the Semi electric semi-truck has started production in Nevada, and the Optimus humanoid robot has begun production in Fremont.

According to a report by Financial Associated Press, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, reflected on his experience leading the government efficiency department in a preview of biographer Walter Isaacson's new podcast "Builders." Musk stated that cutting government spending has failed to address the U.S. fiscal deficit from within the government, and the only way to solve the U.S. national debt issue is through AI and robotics; it is impossible to rely solely on spending cuts to resolve the problem.Musk mentioned that Trump, both houses of Congress, and even the judicial system lack the genuine willingness to cut government spending. Trump wants to be liked and does not enjoy being blamed for funding cuts. He admitted that he got a bit caught up at that time, spending too long away from his companies; if he could do it over, his official tenure should only last one or two months instead of four, and he should have returned earlier to focus on AI. When asked if it was intoxicating to be in the West Wing of the White House, he said there was indeed a bit of that feeling, as it was pretty cool to witness major decisions in the Oval Office.The report cited campaign finance disclosures and a spokesperson for Musk's political action committee, stating that political spending in this election cycle has accumulated to approximately $366 million, with at least $276 million flowing to Republican-related organizations and their super political action committees since July of this year. It also mentioned that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that a 3% economic growth rate is expected to help escape debt through growth; Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark stated at the IMF-World Bank annual meeting that under extreme scenarios where AI capabilities rapidly advance and become widespread, the U.S. GDP could reach $44.4 trillion by 2030, a figure that is not a baseline forecast. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office projects a federal deficit of $1.9 trillion for fiscal year 2026, expanding to $3.1 trillion by 2036.

Elon Musk stated that the only way to solve the U.S. national debt issue is to rely on artificial intelligence and robots. He acknowledged that the government efficiency reforms he once led did not achieve the expected results, and in the future, he may attempt to address this issue again with the help of artificial intelligence.Musk also pointed out that there is no willingness to cut spending from the president, the House of Representatives, the Senate, or the judicial branch.

According to the official announcement, Gate has launched the AGENCY perpetual contract (settled in USDT), supporting 1-10x leverage, and has simultaneously launched the AGENCY trading bot and Order Tracking feature.AGENCY (Agency) is a Launchpad on Solana equipped with AI agents and automated vaults for launching tokens.

According to the official announcement, Gate has launched HOOKED, HOOKR contract trading, trading robots, and Order Tracking features, with both contracts supporting 1-10 times leverage.HOOKED (Hooked) is a MEME Launchpad that supports programmable trading rules; HOOKR (Hookr.fun) is a functional Token of the programmable token issuance market protocol Hookr.fun on the Robinhood Chain.

According to the official announcement, Gate has launched the POD perpetual contract (settled in USDT), supporting 1-10 times leverage, and has simultaneously launched the POD trading bot and Order Tracking feature.POD (Dolphin) is a decentralized AI Inference / DePIN network, where users can utilize idle GPUs to provide inference computing power for Dolphin and other Open-weight AI Models.

According to a report by Caixin, the latest report from International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that the global humanoid robot market continues to experience explosive growth. In the first half of 2026, global humanoid robot shipments are expected to approach 25,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 432.1%. The industry is accelerating its transition from technology validation to commercial application.Among them, China’s shipments exceeded 19,000 units, accounting for approximately 77.9% of the global market; ZhiYuan's shipments exceeded 8,600 units. IDC predicts that by 2030, global humanoid robot shipments will exceed 750,000 units, entering a period of accelerated large-scale application.

According to the official announcement, the Gate contract Robinhood section has launched AGRIPPA and MONITOR contract trading, trading robots, and Order Tracking features, all supporting 1-10 times leverage for long and short positions.AGRIPPA (Agrippa) is named after the ancient Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and features a cute Bear-style Avatar; MONITOR (The Situation) revolves around the long-popular internet meme "Monitoring the Situation." Both are on-chain tokens of Robinhood.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk accepted an exclusive interview with China Central Television's finance channel. When discussing robots, he stated that everyone could have their own personal robot, which can take care of elderly parents, look after children, and serve as a one-on-one tutor for kids, handling various tasks.Musk mentioned that in the future world, a person could control hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of physical robots and digital intelligences. "My prediction is that within ten years, there will be at least 1 billion humanoid robots; in the next 15 years, it may reach 10 billion; and in the next 20 years, it could reach 100 billion."

According to a research report released by Tiger Sniff on September 20, as of August 2026, there are a total of 106 publicly disclosed centralized embodied intelligence data collection centers in the country, of which 84 are in operation, accounting for 79.25%. 52 centers disclosed the number of deployed robots, totaling approximately 3,972 units, which estimates that there are at least over 5,000 robots operating in data collection centers nationwide. The peak of construction is expected in the first quarter of 2026, after which new projects will significantly decrease, and the industry will shift from intensive construction to concentrated operation.In terms of regional distribution, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong have 18, 17, and 11 centers respectively, Sichuan has 8, and Beijing has 7. In terms of robot brands, Zhiyuan Robotics appeared 31 times, Leju 15 times, UBTECH 13 times, and Yushu Technology and Galaxy General each 10 times. 65.96% of data collection centers use a single robot brand, while 34.04% adopt a multi-brand strategy, and cross-entity data reuse remains a challenge.Regarding data pricing, the current real machine data costs about 500 to 1,000 yuan/hour, UMI and other non-entity data costs about 300 to 400 yuan/hour, and simulated synthetic data costs about 200 to 500 yuan/hour, with remote operation collection accounting for 79.05%. The report points out that centralized data collection has not yet formed a stable commercial closed loop, with buyer growth lagging behind base expansion. Centers that primarily rely on one-time construction funding will face greater operational pressure, and the industry elimination race has already begun.

According to official news, the Gate perpetual contract area for stocks was launched on September 18 at 18:00 (UTC+8) with contract trading for PATH (UiPath), CYPH (Cypherpunk Holdings), HUT (Hut 8), APLD (Applied Digital Corporation), AGPU (ExaWatt), QLD (ProShares Ultra QQQ), and CONL (Coin Daily Double Long ETF), as well as trading bots and Order Tracking features, supporting 1-20 times leverage.

Research institution Shoal Research released a report stating that bots account for about 60% of HTML content HTTP requests on the Cloudflare network, while humans account for 38.2%. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince previously predicted that bot traffic would surpass human traffic by 2027, and later announced that the growth of agent traffic has already led to bots exceeding human traffic.The report states that AI applications keep users in chat interfaces and summarize content, rather than redirecting them back to the original site. AI crawlers have a much higher crawl-to-return ratio than Googlebot, with ClaudeBot averaging about 4,200 pages crawled per return visit over the past year. Pew research shows that AI summaries have reduced click-through rates from 15% to 8%.The robots.txt and content exchange traffic model are difficult to maintain. Litigation and private authorization are stopgap measures. Pay-per-request is divided into a closed market with keys and open protocols using HTTP 402 and stablecoins like x402 and MPP. Most websites still offer free access or block it.

According to the official announcement, Gate has launched perpetual contract trading for STONK, BEN, and ZCAT, all supporting 1-10 times leverage for both long and short positions, and has simultaneously opened trading bot and Order Tracking features.STONK is the platform token of StonkFun, a token launch platform on Solana; BEN is a character-type meme officially launched by Flap and used to showcase the "Stock Meme" product gameplay; ZCAT is a Zcash-themed Solana meme launched by StonkFun, featuring a cat with its face covered by a paper bag.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company will definitely develop humanoid robots while also exploring other forms of robots. He believes that the reality of human society and tools is mostly designed around the human body structure, so humanoid robots are reasonable; however, the robot form is not the key, what is truly important is the "robot brain."Altman mentioned that in the short term, humanoid robots are unlikely to enter ordinary households. OpenAI prefers to first apply them in industrial scenarios such as data center construction and maintenance, while general-purpose robots for individual users are a long-term goal.

According to data from the International Federation of Robotics, Chinese companies installed 295,000 new industrial robots in China in 2024, accounting for 54% of the global total. Two years ago, China had over 2 million industrial robots in operation, approximately 4.5 times that of the second-place Japan. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, the revenue of China's robotics industry exceeded 300 billion yuan (4.4 billion USD) last year, with an average annual growth rate of over 20% over five years. Industrial robot exports are expected to grow by 49% in 2025, making China a net exporter of industrial robots for the first time.Chinese manufacturers now hold the majority share of the domestic industrial robot market, which was previously dominated by Fanuc, ABB, Yaskawa, and KUKA before 2024. BYD's Xi'an factory operates thousands of automated robotic arms for electric vehicle assembly lines, with key components being nearly fully autonomous. The Yangshan Port in Shanghai has built the world's largest automated terminal, almost entirely operated by automated guided vehicles and remotely controlled gantry cranes, with minimal human intervention. Regulatory authorities in Guangdong Province recently approved 48 "robot +" deployment scenarios covering manufacturing, logistics, and service sectors. The quadruped and humanoid robot company Yushu Technology went public last month, with its first-day trading valuation exceeding 1,200 times its past earnings.

Meta is testing robots for maintaining its artificial intelligence system data centers, including machines for replacing network cables, rebooting servers, and inspecting equipment. According to WIRED, Meta has tested robots from San Francisco's Watney Robotics, Quebec's Kinova, and Zurich's ABB to reduce labor costs. An employee estimated that a successful cable replacement robot could replace up to 80% of the work in certain positions, but the machine currently cannot match human speed.Meta's robotics program has raised concerns, with employees believing that automation may reduce the demand for experienced technicians and shift remaining work to low-wage positions operated by AI instructions. A Meta spokesperson stated that the U.S. is experiencing the largest infrastructure boom since World War II, with a severe shortage of skilled workers, and the company needs more workers, not fewer. Currently, robots still require human supervision and face challenges with obstacles, battery life, visual inspections, and handling dense cabling.Nvidia and Alibaba are also developing systems to improve robot training. ACE Robotics Chairman Wang Xiaogang stated that embodied AI could experience a "ChatGPT moment" by the end of 2027. Additionally, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates proposed taxing robots and AI tokens, believing that the current tax system may make machines cheaper than employees.

Investor Joanna Lichter published a post outlining the working hypothesis of value accumulation in the robotics field, which she believes has a barbell structure: one end consists of horizontal robotic foundation models (RFM) and infrastructure platforms that achieve compound growth through data, computing power, and ecosystems; the other end consists of category-leading application companies that capture value by transforming intelligence into useful work. The middle layer lacks attractiveness, including interchangeable models, easily replicable tools, and deployments lacking software leverage.She pointed out that, unlike large language models, robotics faces distribution costs, scarce physical data, real-time computing power limitations, and security constraints, presenting a gated diffusion rather than immediate large-scale adoption. If deployment can form a learning feedback loop, reducing the manpower required per robot and accumulating reusable data and operational knowledge, it can become a moat. Vertical entry points can accelerate this path, allowing value to ultimately accumulate at both ends of the technology stack.

SpaceXAI announced the expansion of the availability of the Grok robot, adding support for SuperGrok Plus, Cursor Pro+, and Cursor Teams packages.

According to Fortune magazine, Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Bitcoin treasury company Strategy, stated that artificial intelligence is changing the way wealth is created, and businesses and individuals should not try to compete with machines but should leverage AI to amplify their own capabilities. In an interview, Saylor mentioned that he used ChatGPT to help Strategy design a preferred stock financing plan based on Bitcoin, ultimately enabling the company to raise about $15 billion through an IPO and related financing. He stated, "AI helped me create $15 billion."Saylor believes that the core advantage of the AI era is not to repeatedly execute tasks that machines can accomplish, but to ask better questions and use AI to explore new opportunities that were previously unattainable. "Don't try to work harder than robots." In recent years, Saylor has pushed Strategy to allocate Bitcoin on a large scale, transforming the company from a traditional software enterprise into a publicly traded company with Bitcoin as its core asset. Although this strategy comes with higher risks, Saylor stated that significant innovations often require enduring volatility and continuously adjusting direction. He noted that the successful entrepreneurs of the future will be those who can combine AI with human creativity, rather than individuals trying to replace AI in completing tasks.