From spring 2025 to winter 2026, renting a humanoid robot for a business event in China has gone from costing between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan a day to being listed at 1,796.
Robot dogs already cost 78 yuan a day in JD.comless than 10 euros. A drop of 80% in twelve months.
Why is it important. Beyond the price war, this is the first real scale laboratory in the humanoid robot business, and what happens says a lot about the real state of an industry that moves a lot of money in financing but still needs a human behind each machine.
In figures:
Between the lines. The most interesting number in this matter is not any of the above, but this: every robot deployed today arrives with a human engineer behind it. This technician assumes transportation, calibration, live operation and unforeseen events. The actual model is not ‘Robot as a Servicebut rather ‘Robot + Person as a Service’. The logic of SaaS (marginal costs that approach zero when scaling) does not apply here.
Each new unit in the catalog implies a new payroll. The bottleneck is therefore not in the supply of machines, but in the supply of people capable of operating them.
The context. Qingtianzu, the platform controlled by Zhiyuan Robotics and backed by Hillhouse Capital, connects more than 200 suppliers with companies that need robots for presentations, inaugurations or weddings. like a marketplace.
During the Chinese New Year, their orders grew by 70% and exceeded 5,000 orders in one week. JD.com saw searches for “robot” increase 25-fold. The demand exists, the problem is the cost structure.
Yes, but. Rent has fallen by 80%, but operating costs have barely budged: transportation, engineers, insurance, logistics… Everything remains basically the same..
The payback period cited by operators (about six or eight months) assumes about ten monthly orders at 2,500 yuan on average. But that works during peak demand. Outside of the holiday weeks, that rhythm is broken.
The big question. 65% of orders are for entertainment and marketing: robots that dance or parade at fairs and those types of cute but short-lived acts. Intermittent uses by definition.
To have a stable base, the sector needs to enter factories, hospitals and logistics. But experts have already warned: the majority of current humanoids are in the “cerebellum” phase, executing instructions without autonomous decision. That jump, according to the most optimistic estimatesit will take about five years.
The panoramic. In a matter of months, China has built an industry with funded platforms, distributed logistics and real demand. It is the first country that has brought humanoid robots to the mass market, even if it is to perform in shopping centers and shake hands in dealerships.
TrendForce foresees more than 50,000 units shipped in 2026, 700% more. The sector has its own precedent: drones for shows, which did not take off for their industrial uses but for the shows nightlife in cities across China. Robot rental can follow the same script. The difference is that an autonomous drone no longer needs a pilot. The humanoid robot still does.
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Featured image | Andy Kelly
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