China’s Robotics Giant Aims to Replicate DJI’s Global Drone Dominance

There is a flywheel effect at play here: the more units a company sells, the better deals it can negotiate with suppliers, and the more capital it can allocate toward optimizing its manufacturing process. Higher sales volumes also enable a company to bring more components in-house, pushing costs even lower, which in turn drives further sales and provides additional funding for production improvements.

Over several years, this flywheel effect allowed DJI to dominate the global drone market. SemiAnalysis argues that Unitree is now positioned to achieve a similar trajectory with legged robots.

According to SemiAnalysis, Unitree has developed its own motors, gearboxes, lidar sensors, and cameras. “Unitree’s self-produced motors can operate at just 30-40% of the cost of equivalent Western motors,” SemiAnalysis reports. “They are now manufacturing some of the cheapest humanoid gearboxes in the world.”

This vertical integration could enable Unitree to capture the global market for quadruped and humanoid robots in the same manner that DJI seized the global drone market.

Of course, this outcome is not guaranteed. Unitree faces several Chinese competitors. While Unitree remains the global leader in quadrupeds, a domestic rival, AgiBot, has outsold Unitree in humanoid robot sales in recent months. Furthermore, numerous smaller Chinese robotics firms could challenge both Unitree and AgiBot in the coming years.

However, Unitree faces little competition in the United States and the broader Western market. Boston Dynamics produces excellent robots, but they tend to be significantly more expensive. Several American startups, including Tesla, Figure, and 1X, are aiming to build humanoid robots, yet consumers cannot currently purchase a robot from any of these companies.

This situation has alarmed some American policymakers. In June, a bipartisan group in the House introduced a bill to restrict the importation of Chinese robots, with the official press release specifically mentioning Unitree. Subsequently, in July, the FCC imposed broad new regulations on foreign-made robots that are likely to impact Unitree and other Chinese firms.

Nevertheless, the robotics market is global. Even if Chinese companies are locked out of the US market, Unitree or one of its Chinese rivals could still come to dominate the global humanoid robotics market.

There is a clear parallel to the electric vehicle sector, where Chinese companies like BYD are effectively banned from the US but are making rapid gains in the rest of the world. There is a risk that a ban on Chinese robots could have a similar impact: rather than hampering the growth of companies like Unitree, it could render the US a robotics backwater.

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