The humanoid market tripled to a $740M half-year — and the average robot got cheaper, IDC says.

On September 30, research firm IDC put the first hard numbers on just how fast the humanoid industry is scaling: makers shipped almost 25,000 humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, up 432.1% from the same period a year earlier, and first-half revenue topped $740 million, up 322.7%. Shanghai-based AgiBot led by a wide margin — roughly 8,600 units, about 35% of the global market, and the top spot by revenue as well — with Unitree second at around 5,000 units and a steep drop to a pack of mostly Chinese makers shipping hundreds of units each. Nine of IDC's top ten vendors are Chinese; IDC says Chinese companies built more than 95% of all humanoids shipped in the half, and Chinese customers bought about 78% of them. It is the third major tracker to land this way: Smart Analytics Global counted about 19,100 units (up 272%), Counterpoint about 22,000, and now IDC nearly 25,000 — and all three agree AgiBot has overtaken Unitree for first place.

The number that matters most for buyers is hiding in the math. Divide IDC's revenue by its units and the average humanoid shipped in the first half cost about $29,600 — down from roughly $37,000 a year earlier. Prices are falling, and fast, as scale and a maturing Chinese supply chain drive component costs down. The growth is lumpy and lopsided: UBTech's shipments grew roughly 1,900% year over year, Astribot's about 1,400% and Galaxea AI's about 1,100%, while AgiBot grew about tenfold and Unitree, off a much larger base, grew about 120%. IDC also sees a less concentrated market than its rivals do — in its data AgiBot and Unitree hold just over half of shipments, with companies outside the top ten accounting for about 28%, a sign the field is broadening rather than hardening into a duopoly.

The caveats are as important as the totals. By IDC's own breakdown, research and education, performances and exhibitions, and government data centers together accounted for 69% of first-half shipments — meaning more than two-thirds of these robots still are not doing productive work in any conventional sense. The encouraging part is the trend: that figure is down from 83.8% for all of 2025, as volume shifts toward manufacturing, logistics and retail. Figure is the only American maker in IDC's top ten, logged at just a few dozen units — almost certainly undercounted, since IDC appears to tally robots sold to outside paying customers while much of Figure's fleet works internally or in data-collection. AgiBot, for its part, says it has crossed 20,000 cumulative robots built, is deploying more than 300 at a Chinese theme park and has put wheeled G2 units on a live electronics line. On the strength of all this, IDC raised its 2030 forecast by about 50%, to more than 750,000 units a year — a target that requires the market to roughly double every year for four straight years.

For a buyer, the signal is that humanoids are becoming a real, scaling category with a price curve bending toward car money — but two asterisks define what that means for you. First, the headline shipment counts overstate real-world utility: with 69% of units still going to labs, stages and government data centers, a big number next to a vendor's name does not prove its robots hold down jobs, and leadership is volatile enough that, as one analysis put it, today's leader is one product cycle from being lapped — bet on the supply chain and the deployment pipeline, not the logo. Second, the volume and the price declines are almost entirely Chinese, and the FCC's July ban keeps new Chinese humanoids out of the US market — so the sub-$30,000 price curve is not yet one American buyers can ride. The cleanest tell to track is that application-mix number: when the share of robots doing actual work climbs past half, the market will have turned from a demo business into a tool business.