China now ships 97% of the world's humanoids — and AgiBot, not Unitree, is the volume leader.

Chinese companies shipped more than 97% of the world's humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, according to new data from California research firm Smart Analytics Global that was first reported by Bloomberg on August 10. Global humanoid shipments reached roughly 19,100 units in the six months — more than triple the 5,100 units shipped in the same period a year earlier — and China accounted for the overwhelming majority of them. Everyone else, U.S. makers such as Tesla, Figure and Agility included, split the remaining sliver of under 3%, a few hundred units apiece. It is the clearest single number yet on a gap that the sector's valuations and demo reels tend to obscure: on volume, this is not a close race.

The more surprising detail is who leads inside China. Shanghai-based AgiBot overtook Hangzhou's Unitree to claim the top spot, shipping about 8,400 humanoids for a 44% global share against Unitree's 5,900, according to the data, and the four largest suppliers were all Chinese. That is a genuine change at the front of the field — Unitree has long been the name most associated with high-volume, low-cost humanoids — and it lands the same week Unitree's Shanghai IPO drew frenzied demand. Both companies' six-month volumes dwarf the low-hundreds output that the best-documented U.S. programs have actually disclosed.

How the robots are being used is shifting too. Industrial and commercial applications accounted for more than 70% of shipments, up from roughly 50% a year earlier, said SAG founder and principal researcher Linda Sui, and the firm expects shipments to reach about 60,000 units this year and half a million by 2030. But the report is careful where the marketing is not: the number of humanoids actually doing commercially productive work remains small, and long-duration, unattended operation still hinges on unresolved gains in fine motor control, reliability and battery life. China's lead is built on mass-production capacity, a deep local component supply chain and government funding — advantages on cost and volume, not yet on autonomy.

For a buyer, the data cuts two ways. The cheapest and most available humanoids overwhelmingly come from China, and AgiBot — not Unitree — is now the volume leader worth a first look if you are shopping the Chinese field. But two caveats matter more than the market-share crown. First, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission added foreign-made humanoids to its Covered List on July 28, blocking new Chinese models from the equipment authorization they need to be sold in the United States, so American procurement teams cannot simply buy the leaders' latest hardware. Second, a shipment is not a deployment: most of those 19,100 units went to research, education and demonstration, and even the 70%-industrial figure describes where robots were sold, not proof they work a shift unattended. Weigh named, dated, hours-logged deployments — a Digit at GXO, a Figure unit at BMW — above any headline shipment count.