Musk ignites the trillion market, and capital scrambles for Huawei's "genius boy" 

Tencent News Deep Web

2024-06-26 11:52Published on the official account of the "Deep Web" column of Tencent News in Beijing

Image source: Visual China  

Author丨Enron 

Editor丨Xue Fang

Produced by丨Deep Web Tencent News Xiaoman Studio

In May, Tesla released a video of its humanoid robot, Optimus, taking batteries and placing them in a neat array in the battery slot. At the end of April, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center released the humanoid robot "Tiangong", which is capable of running stably at a speed of 6 km/h. In February this year, the domestic humanoid robot Walker S has entered the new energy vehicle factory and started a "part-time career".

Humanoid robots seem to be accelerating from science fiction to reality, and Musk predicted at the 2024 Tesla shareholder meeting that "humanoid robots will become the main force of industry, and the number is expected to surpass that of humans, which is expected to reach 10 billion-20 billion." Tesla aims to produce 1 billion units per year, accounting for more than 10% of the market. Its cost is controlled at about $10,000, and the selling price is expected to be $20,000. ”

And three years ago, in August 2021, Musk first proposed the concept of the humanoid robot Tesla Bot at AI DAY. A year later, the 5-foot-8-inch (1.73-meter) humanoid robot prototype - Optimus (Optimus Prime) was unveiled at Tesla's AI Day.

And this is about 50 years after Waseda University in Japan launched the world's first humanoid robot, WABOT-1. The turning point occurred at the end of 2022, when after the advent of ChatGPT, AI provided new technical support for the development of humanoid robots.

"After ChatGPT ignited a wave of large language models, the industry realized that humanoid robots have great potential. Generative AI can allow machines to further understand pictures, videos, and even spaces. Theoretically, the industry has seen the engineering path of LLM (large language model) to re-empower the robot track. Wang Guangxi, vice president of Lenovo Group and partner of Lenovo Venture Capital Group, told AI Lightyear.

For a time, AI software manufacturers, core component manufacturers, traditional automobiles, home appliance manufacturers, and a number of innovative robot ontology companies have all entered the humanoid robot market. According to Tianyancha data, from 2019 to June 2024, more than 500,000 new companies have been established in the field of robotics in mainland China. Among them, more than 200,000 will be established after 2023.

Even though AI has added a fire to the current humanoid robot industry, investors who participated in this year's ICRA conference (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation) in Japan revealed to AI Lightyear, "As an important platform to display the industry's cutting-edge technologies and academic achievements, the ICRA conference has not reached a consensus on how to engineer and solve many topics such as motion planning and body coordination." ”

Musk entered the field of humanoid robots

In the industry, humanoid robots are also referred to as embodied intelligence, or complex forms of robots with AI capabilities. Compared with industrial robots and service robots, the focus of this wave of humanoid robots is not mechanization and automation, but generative AI and intelligent generalization.

If the generative AI + embodied experience has given the world hope for physical intelligence, then Elon. Musk's entry into the robot industry has made the industry see the possibility of embodied intelligent engineering.

"Humanoid robots are so popular now, one is that Musk is doing it, and the other is AI." Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree Technology, said in an interview with "LatePost", "Before Musk did it, this direction had reached a low point. I haven't heard of anyone buying (humanoid robots) either, and the circle is full of pessimism. ”

In the past 50 years of humanoid robot development, although humanoid robots have two hands, two legs, different body joints, and have simple limb control systems, vision systems and dialogue systems, these robots are operating according to pre-set programs set by humans.

In March 2011, the Tokyo earthquake triggered the Pacific Tsunami, which caused a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. In order to detect the radiation level in the area after the accident, the Japanese government sent robots to the scene. Faced with the uneven terrain inside the nuclear power plant, the robot that has been damaged by radiation will soon be unable to protect itself. A few months later, Fukushima was turned into a graveyard for robots.

Automaker Honda was ordered to send ASIMO, the world's most advanced humanoid robot at the time, to the scene. The "robot celebrity," who conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and walked the red carpet of movie premieres several times, did little in disaster relief, like other robots sent to Fukushima.

Even the Atlas, a humanoid robot launched by Boston Dynamics in 2013, has been able to complete difficult maneuvers such as stacking boxes in a warehouse, rotating 360 degrees, and backflipping, but in essence, it still follows a pre-made path and completes instructions in a controlled environment.

But now AI has changed the decline and frustration in the field of humanoid robots. Around 2023 is a key node in the development of the field of humanoid robots in China. During this period, a wave of innovative robot ontology companies such as Shanghai Zhiyuan New Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Zhiyuan Robot), Progressive Power, Xingdong Era, Yuequan Binics, and Accelerated Evolution appeared, and the old robot company UBTECH and new energy vehicle Xiaopeng have also laid out the field of humanoid robots.

The leap in technology has obviously also ignited the enthusiasm of capital. Sequoia China, Hillhouse Ventures, Lenovo Ventures, Matrix Partners, Source Code Capital and other investment institutions have entered the field of humanoid robots.

According to Tianyancha data, from 2019 to June 2024, the number of financings in the field of robotics was 110, 202, 451, 517, 465, and 215 respectively. Focusing on the field of humanoid robots, according to incomplete statistics from "AI Lightyear", since 2023 alone, there have been 15 public financings.

From the perspective of global market growth, according to the "Humanoid Robot Industry Research Report", the global humanoid robot market size will be about 16.27 billion yuan in 2023, and the growth rate will be 30% in 2024, and the global humanoid robot market size is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2028, reaching 137.538 billion yuan, and will grow into a trillion market in 2035, with a market size of 1.155 billion yuan.

At present, humanoid robots are moving from the laboratory to the key node of industrialization

Zhiyuan Robot, established in February 2023, has received 5 financings in 1 year, becoming one of the hottest humanoid robot projects in the venture capital circle of the year. In fact, Zhiyuan Robot Peng Zhihui has become the hottest target of capital at the beginning of his business in 2023.

An investor who has been in contact with Peng Zhihui revealed to "AI Lightyear", "In May 2023, when Zhiyuan Robot completed the second round of financing, there was no robot demo, but at this time the valuation had reached 1 billion yuan. Three months later, Zhiyuan Robot's first robot "Expedition A1" was officially unveiled.

Peng Zhihui is known as a "genius boy" born in the 90s. In 2018, after graduating from the School of Information and Communication Engineering of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, he joined the AI laboratory of OPPO Research Institute as an algorithm engineer. In 2020, he was selected into Huawei's "Genius Youth Program" to engage in AI edge heterogeneous computing research. At the end of 2022, Peng Zhihui left Huawei to co-found Zhiyuan Robotics with Yan Weixin, a professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University. The former is responsible for the "brain" of the humanoid robot, and the latter is in charge of the "body" of the humanoid robot.

In the first half of 2023, when Baidu Venture Capital, Jingwei Ventures, Gaorong Capital and other capitals are vying for the A round of financing of Zhiyuan Machinery, Wang Guangxi's team is promoting the Pre-A round of investment in Chase Power.

"We've also seen Zhiyuan robots, but it's already a bit expensive when we want to get in. In this wave of humanoid robots, many investors who invest in AI and the Internet are watching, and they will bring the thinking of the Internet to the hard technology track, establish barriers at the level of capital and investors, and quickly solve the battle. Wang Guangxi told "AI Light Year".

Similar to Peng Zhihui, this wave of entrepreneurs who have newly entered the embodied intelligence track generally have two characteristics. First, they are young, and many of them are entrepreneurs born in the 90s. For example, Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree Technology, Chen Jianyu, the founder of Xingdong Era, and Jiang Zheyuan, the founder of Songyan Power, are all post-90s.

"In the past, robot entrepreneurs may have been born in control, automation, and machinery, but the technical elements and fields involved in embodied intelligence are more comprehensive, and they need to have software, vision, AI, hardware, products and cross-border talents who understand the industry and applications. It is difficult to find ready-made "veterans" in the traditional robot track and do a good job of embodied intelligence. Wang Guangxi explained to "AI Light Year".

Second, they all have a deep academic background, and the typical path for investment institutions to contact entrepreneurs in the field of robotics in the early stage is the school.

Wang Guangxi revealed that he was able to get acquainted with Chen Jianyu, the founder of Xingdong Era, who was introduced by Liu Yunhui, a professor of mechanical and automation engineering at Hong Kong Chinese University. "I got to know Professor Masayoshi Tomizuka from Berkeley (UC Berkeley) through Professor Liu. Professor Tomizuka is a pioneer in control theory and applied technology, and Chen Jianyu is his close disciple. ”

At present, the entire field of humanoid robots is still in its early stages, and the focus of the industry is still on who can realize the intelligent generalization ability of robots. Some people in the industry also said that at present, humanoid robots are at a critical juncture from the laboratory to industrialization.

Even so, now the general public can have their own humanoid robots. Unitree has lowered the price of the G1 standard version of the humanoid robot to 99,000 yuan, which is lower than the target price of Tesla's Optimus Prime humanoid robot ($20,000).

Regarding the price of Unitree G1, Li Junlan, research manager of IDC China, explained to "AI Lightyear", "The GI standard version is a humanoid robot product with a complete framework, but it needs advanced configuration in terms of dexterous hands and computing power modules, which has helped to control its costs. The low price of GI is conducive to the humanoid robot to a wider user vision, and whether it ushers in the flashpoint still depends on the actual landing application. ”

"No one in the industry now cares how much Tesla's upcoming robot demo will sell. Everyone's focus is on the intelligence and scene generalization of the new robots, such as using 11 or 12 degrees of freedom dexterous hands to do refined things. After large-scale mass production in the future, everyone will care about the price of humanoid robots. Wang Guangxi thinks.

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