Introduction: The delivery expectation for U1 has plummeted, but this does not mean it is unimportant.
Today, UBTECH Robotics officially commenced the delivery of its U1 robot.
Officially launched on June 30, this bionic humanoid robot targets the home companion market, with its ability to provide users with "emotional value" as a key selling point.
This product has secured over 13,000 orders. Company executives boldly stated at the launch event that they guarantee the delivery of 10,000 units this year. If UBTECH Robotics fulfills this promise, the industry landscape is expected to undergo a dramatic shift.
According to statistics from the Humanoid Robot Scenario Application Alliance, the top five humanoid robot companies by sales in the first half of 2026 (26H1) are UBTECH Robotics (16,123 units), Agibot (8,400 units), Unitree Robotics (5,900 units), Leju (2,000 units), and ROKAE (1,600 units).
If UBTECH Robotics delivers 10,000 units of the U1, the company is highly likely to become the sales champion of humanoid robots this year, taking a cliff-like lead over other players.
Last year, however, the competition among industry players for the sales champion title was still quite fierce. The "General Embodied Robot Market Radar" report released by market research firm Omdia shows that Agibot secured the top global shipment volume with 5,168 units annually, capturing a 39% market share. Meanwhile, Unitree issued an official announcement stating that its humanoid robot shipments last year exceeded 5,500 units, excluding other robot products such as dual-arm wheeled robots.
However, this rosy outlook has encountered a variable. During a recent earnings call, company executives revealed that the actual deliverable volume of the U1 series this year is only 1,500 to 2,000 units.
With the sharp reduction in delivery expectations for the U1, which provides emotional value, UBTECH Robotics must still go all out on the industrial front for the remainder of this year.
To Make a Profit in Q4, Does UBTECH Robotics Still Rely on Industrial Products?
During the earnings call, the management sent a clear signal.
Zhang Ju, CFO of UBTECH Robotics, stated: The original expectation to achieve single-quarter break-even in the fourth quarter of 2027 remains unchanged, and the company is striving to advance this timeline. The adjusted EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) for the single quarter in the fourth quarter of this year "has the opportunity to turn positive." This marks the first time since UBTECH Robotics went public at the end of 2023 that management has anchored its profitability expectation to a specific quarter.
The signal is clear enough, but the pressure is equally immense.
Under the realistic constraint that only 1,500 to 2,000 units of the U1 robot can be delivered this year, if UBTECH Robotics wants to achieve a positive EBITDA in Q4, it will largely rely on the performance of its products in the industrial sector.
The U1 robot is a product with a massive price range, with selling prices spanning from 119,800 to 990,000 CNY. Regarding this product, company executives stated that 1,500 to 2,000 units will be delivered this year.
Under these circumstances, the market cannot clearly determine how much revenue the U1 robot will actually bring to the company in the second half of the year. Therefore, UBTECH Robotics' performance in the industrial sector naturally becomes a key focus for the market.
In the first half of 2026, UBTECH Robotics generated a revenue of 1.269 billion CNY, a year-on-year increase of 104.2%. Among this, revenue from full-size humanoid robot products and solutions reached 590 million CNY, a year-on-year surge of 1,445%, with 921 units sold. The proportion of this revenue jumped from 6.1% in the same period last year to 46.5%, instantly becoming the company's largest source of income. The gross margin of the Walker S2 exceeded 70%, with the bill of materials cost dropping from approximately 350,000 CNY to about 180,000 CNY, and the average selling price decreasing from 700,000 to 800,000 CNY down to 600,000 CNY. This is an industrial-grade profitability model that is rapidly being validated.
UBTECH Robotics has waited for too long. Over the past six years, the company has accumulated losses exceeding 5 billion CNY, with a loss of 339 million CNY in the first half of 2026 (a 23% year-on-year reduction in losses).
With a revenue of 1.269 billion CNY in the first half and a full-year target of 3.5 billion to 4 billion CNY, the company needs to achieve 2.2 billion to 2.7 billion CNY in the second half, nearly twice the first half's figure.
The pressure is visible, but UBTECH Robotics' order backlog is not thin. According to a research report by Caitong Securities, in the first half of 2026, UBTECH Robotics accumulated new orders totaling over 1 billion CNY, including three orders at the 100 million CNY level. This includes Airbus's initial procurement of 100 Walker S2 units for aircraft assembly, marking the world's first order to introduce humanoid robots into the aviation manufacturing field; automakers such as BYD, Geely, Audi FAW, and NIO signed long-term supply agreements exceeding 500 million CNY; the State Grid's total budget for embodied AI procurement in 2026 is 6.8 billion CNY for approximately 8,500 units of equipment, and UBTECH Robotics is listed among the five core body suppliers. The firm positions 2026 as the year of "large-scale commercialization" for UBTECH Robotics, with industrial orders accelerating their release and the coverage density in the three core scenarios of aviation manufacturing, automotive industry, and intelligent manufacturing rapidly increasing.
U1's Contribution to UBTECH Robotics' Performance This Year Is Limited, But Still Crucial
Although the U1's contribution to UBTECH Robotics' performance in 2026 may be limited, its strategic significance could be more profound than simply selling a few more Walker S units in the short term.
The core reason is that the U1 is opening up a brand-new track for UBTECH Robotics: consumer-grade humanoid robots.
The B2B industrial market is UBTECH Robotics' fundamental base, but this market has a ceiling. Industrial customers have long validation cycles, limited procurement volumes per customer, and stringent delivery standards that calculate production line takt time down to the hour. The Walker S2 entering the Airbus supply chain and securing orders from top automakers carries extremely high value, but the essence of the industrial business dictates that it is a game of "slow money"—slow contract signing, slow delivery, and slow revenue recognition.
The consumer market is different. The global consumer electronics market is a massive market targeting hundreds of millions of households, with a potential user base far exceeding any single industrial scenario. The emergence of the U1 has made UBTECH Robotics a pioneer in the consumer-grade hyper-bionic humanoid robot track—while Agibot and Unitree compete for the throne of industrial mass production, UBTECH Robotics has chosen a different path, securing a unique position in an almost blank market.
The ceiling for this track is far higher than that of the B2B sector.
The dimension of brand value cannot be ignored either. The brand awareness established by the U1 in the consumer market is something the Walker S can never achieve in the B2B market. Consumer products naturally possess social dissemination attributes; users unboxing, sharing photos, and posting short videos—every single share is free promotion for the UBTECH Robotics brand.
Consumer user data can also feed back into AI (Artificial Intelligence) model iteration. UBTECH Robotics' self-developed Thinker 1.0 foundational large model ranks first in nine embodied AI benchmarks, and the Thinker-VLA achieves a 75% full-process success rate in laboratory scenarios for industrial handling, loading, and unloading. More interaction data from user scenarios means faster model evolution speed. This data flywheel effect is difficult to establish in industrial scenarios.
Of course, the challenges are real. The product's functional boundaries are limited, the user stickiness for emotional companionship has not been validated by the market, and price barriers still exist. This makes user word-of-mouth after the first batch of deliveries crucial; feedback on the product across social media will largely have a positive or negative impact on subsequent orders.
UBTECH Robotics is walking two paths simultaneously: the U1 represents the consumer route, leveraging the selling point of emotional companionship to boost topic heat and brand momentum; the Walker series represents the industrial route, accumulating real value through delivery capabilities and production line performance.
The hard power of industrial products largely supports the lower limit of UBTECH Robotics; while being able to break through in the consumer market behind the U1 determines the upper limit of UBTECH Robotics.