Wall Street Insights: On July 9, Swancor announced that Shanghai Zhiyuan Xinchuang Technology Co., Ltd. (controlled by Shanghai Zhiyuan Hengyue Technology Partnership and its affiliate Shanghai Zhiyuan Xinchuang Technology Equipment Partnership) will acquire at least 63.62% of its shares, with the transaction valued at no less than 1.996 billion yuan. After the transaction is completed, the controlling shareholder and actual controller of Swancor will change to Zhiyuan Hengyue and Deng Taihua. If this deal goes through, Swancor will become the first company under a humanoid robotics enterprise listed on the STAR Market.
As an important part of China's capital market, the STAR Market has limited financing capacity and market capacity. If Zhiyuan Robotics chooses to list on the STAR Market through a "backdoor listing" approach, it may indicate that its future development is constrained by the capital scale of the STAR Market. Could this strategy limit the development space for the humanoid robotics industry in China?
Humanoid robotics, as an emerging technology, is still in the exploration stage for its application scenarios. According to relevant research, fields such as hazardous chemical explosion prevention, mining, smelting, nuclear power, power grids, firefighting and emergency response, and rescue operations are considered the best application scenarios for the initial deployment of humanoid robots.
However, do we really need humanoid robots?
From Iron Man to Real Construction Sites
Tesla's Optimus is "practicing running" and "cooking," Boston Dynamics' Atlas is organizing documents and doing somersaults in factories, and Figure 02 is sorting packages in logistics centers.
Many domestic robotics companies have also made appearances, from performing with handkerchiefs and martial arts at the Spring Festival Gala to running, hosting robot marathons, and holding combat competitions.
These scenes look a lot like the future we imagined as children: robots integrating into human society like humans, working in factories, helping humans move things, cook, walk dogs, patrol... As if once this bionic revolution succeeds, human physical labor could completely exit the stage.
But stepping back and returning to the essence of the matter, there are two unavoidable questions that need to be answered:
- Why must robots "resemble humans"?
- Does China really need to follow this path?
Before answering these questions, let's look at some comparative data between humanoid and non-humanoid robots:
Comparison of Financing Scale: Capital Concentration vs. Total Investment
- Humanoid Robotics Field:
- Figure AI Single financing round as high as $2.34 B (2025), valuation approximately $2.6 B Business Insider Business Insider+1 Wikipedia+1.
- Currently raising a new round of $1.5 B, with a target valuation as high as $39.5 B Cinco Días+5 ipo.club+5 Reddit+5.
- Although capital is concentrated, there are currently only a few leading companies, and the overall financing scale is far smaller than that of industrial automation.
- Traditional Robots (AGV/Robotic Arms):
- Global Industrial Robotics Market Size in 2024 approximately $20–27 B MarketsandMarkets+7 Precedence Research+7 Cognitive Market Research+7, expected to exceed $50–84 B by 2030–2034 thelogisticsiq.com.
- AGV/AMR Market Approximately $2 B in 2024, expected to grow to $6 B by 2033 LinkedIn+2 Business Research Insights+2 thelogisticsiq.com+2.
- Investment comes from countless enterprises and small manufacturers, with broad coverage and high market maturity.
Although individual humanoid robotics projects have astonishing financing, the overall market size is far smaller than that of industrial robots and logistics robots; the two are not comparable.
Unit System Cost and R&D Threshold
- Humanoid Robots:
- Complex structure: High degrees of freedom, thousands of components, extremely high system coordination difficulty Business Insider.
- Sensors, actuators, control systems, etc., are relatively expensive, with unit costs typically in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—component costs alone can reach $35k–60k (China vs. Tesla advantage).
- AGV/Robotic Arms:
- Stable single-unit price: AMRs generally $20k–150k, single robotic arm costs tens of thousands of dollars;
- High integration, high standardization, clear ROI, short system deployment cycles, low maintenance costs.
Humanoid robots have high R&D costs and complex systems, while traditional robots offer high cost-effectiveness and mature engineering paths.
Market Deployment Speed and ROI Realization Rate
- Humanoid Robots:
- Most are still in the R&D or testing phase, not yet mass-produced;
- Although Figure AI has collaborated with BMW for validation, large-scale commercial returns have not yet been formed zh.wikipedia.org Reddit+10 Wikipedia+10 zh.wikipedia.org+10.
- AGV/Robotic Arms:
- Already widely used in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, welding, and other scenarios;
- ROI can be recovered within 1–3 years, with rapid deployment and full market validation.
Traditional robots deploy quickly, yield returns fast, and have clear commercialization paths; humanoid robots are still in the experimental stage. Humanoid robots are not mainstream, not even "second best"
The US Bets on Humanoids, a Result of Structural Concession
From the comparative data, non-humanoid robots are the market mainstream. The so-called "humanoid robots" seem more like a capital story for the future. However, a key issue cannot be ignored here—labor.
Even with highly advanced automated production lines, European and American countries still cannot completely eliminate their reliance on people. A large amount of mid-to-low-end manufacturing still requires the support of industrial workers. The cost of the cheapest automated production equipment can easily reach hundreds of thousands, which in high-income countries is still dozens of times the cost of human labor.
Moreover, this situation has already spilled over from manufacturing to the service industry. The US has managed to stand firm under high inflation, thanks to a large immigrant population supporting basic positions across various industries.
The Guardian: "US undocumented farm workers feel ‘hunted like animals’ amid Trump’s immigration raids"
According to a report by The Guardian, industries in the US such as agriculture, construction, sanitation, catering and food processing, manufacturing and meat processing, and transportation have a high proportion of undocumented immigrant employees in some low-wage, low-skill threshold positions.
US manufacturing has gradually hollowed out over the past few decades, lacking people, production capacity, and supply chains—it has a vast military-industrial complex and the world's most advanced automated production equipment, but it cannot produce enough basic components to supply its domestic market. Its industrial upgrade only stays in high-end advanced industries.
On the surface, humanoid robots are the ultimate form of "intelligent terminals." But from the perspective of politics and industrial reality, the US choosing this path is actually a passive choice. Under the dual impact of labor shortages and the cultural and social value shocks caused by immigration, "humanoid robots" seem to be the optimal solution to all problems.
Why Can't They Rebuild the "Ecosystem"?
Three constraints trap the US in the "humanoid" path:
- Labor costs are too high: Shortage of mid-to-high-end industrial workers, high wages, making frequent trial and error difficult.
- Reliance on imported raw materials and components: Sensors, motors, batteries mostly come from Asia.
- Environmental and geopolitical constraints: High barriers to local manufacturing, and decoupling from China makes it difficult to connect with China's vast production capacity.
The biggest problem troubling the US is the human resource issue. High labor costs, powerful unions, and a severe shortage of engineers force the US, including European countries, to bet their future on humanoid robots. Unless they can introduce more skilled industrial workers to complete a full industrial chain upgrade—to solve the "lack of people" problem, they need more "people" for support.
At the same time, with the US's domestic supply chain, it is difficult to create a robot ecosystem driven by efficiency. So they can only create an "electronic human" that can use shovels, tighten screws, and hand over goods—essentially, it's adapting to the old physical world, not reconstructing a new system.
Having failed to upgrade its mid-to-low-end industries, the US can no longer support a fully localized, unmanned equipment-based industrial ecosystem.
They can only think this way:
- Since I can't create a bunch of small tools, I'll create a person who can use tools.
This is a logic that sounds advanced but is actually somewhat helpless. It is also an inevitable result of the US's failed industrial upgrade and the global subcontracting of production and manufacturing.
This Is More Like a Capital Dream, Not an Industrial Revolution
Figure AI's valuation keeps inflating; no matter how clumsy Optimus's movements are, each new video release elicits a stock price response. In the US, humanoid robots are more like a future story told to the capital market.
They are in no hurry to commercialize, nor are they capable of commercializing in the short term, lacking clear C-end or B-end demand scenarios. On the contrary, their capital logic is very clear:
- As long as the story is good, someone will buy it.
Similar to autonomous driving, the metaverse, and brain-computer interfaces, humanoid robots are becoming the next baton in the relay of "technological singularity." But what truly gets deployed and commercialized are ecosystems like Amazon's logistics robots—those non-humanoid machines that follow first principles, where function determines form.
Humanoid ≠ Efficient. Making a tool use a tool is a backlash against efficiency. Essentially, humans invent tools to replace part of our capabilities, thereby improving efficiency.
- A hammer replaces hand hammering;
- A washing machine replaces hand washing;
- An AGV replaces manual搬运.
But when we create a robot that resembles a human and then have it operate a wok, push a cart, or tighten screws, we are actually doing something absurd: making a tool use another tool.
Humans invent tools to make them extensions of the body, improving efficiency. Creating a "human" to operate another tool may be less efficient than manual operation—this is anti-efficiency in engineering terms.
This is a typical case of "taking off pants to fart"—unnecessary, high cost, low efficiency, and adding countless maintenance and failure points.
The US lacks the full industrial chain capability to complete the intelligent upgrade of production and manufacturing, so they choose the humanoid robot path. But that doesn't mean it's the correct path.
China Doesn't Need This Romance
Unlike the US, China's manufacturing industry itself is a high-frequency, distributed, flexible, and intelligent system.
We can mass-produce搬运 AGVs, smart trash cans, delivery robots, automated sorting centers... Even in residential areas, factories, and buildings in first-tier cities, various "non-humanoid" smart devices are already in use.
We don't need a humanoid terminal to adapt to the environment; we have the ability to改造 the environment.
Blindly Following the US's Industrial Path Is the Path Dependency of "Copying Homework"
In the past, Chinese startups were accustomed to "copying US homework": the US proposes a new concept, we bring it back, and commercialize it locally—from early search, internet, e-commerce, to the mobile internet era's sharing economy, SaaS, almost all succeeded.
This approach was once very efficient:
- The US validates demand, China achieves scale and profitability, and finally cashes out by returning to the US.
But today, the technological gap between China and the US has significantly narrowed. Even on the application side, China, with its vast user base and engineering capabilities, has developed a unique ecosystem.
We have the world's strongest manufacturing capabilities, the most complex user demands, and the most flexible application scenarios. Continuing to "blindly copy" at this point is likely the inertia of path dependency, not a judgment based on reality.
What we need is not to "build humans with the US," but to develop our own technological path based on our own structure and market demands.
The STAR Market Is Not a Springboard, But a Ceiling
On the surface, Zhiyuan's backdoor listing seems like an "industry breakthrough signal"; but from a capital structure perspective, it is actually a warning:
- The STAR Market has limited financing capacity and can hardly support companies of Figure AI's scale;
- If the first company in the industry goes public via "low-valuation backdoor listing," subsequent companies will use it as a "valuation anchor";
- Investors are eager to cash out rather than continue深耕, indicating they no longer believe this story can be sustained.
This is not a signal of "takeoff," but a posture of "preparing to land." Capital is preparing to exit.
Don't let romance replace reality. Humanoid robots are not a false proposition, but they should not be China's main path. The US is taking this path because it has no other choice; we are not taking it because we have choices.
What should truly be pursued is not the shell of "resembling humans," but the core of "efficiently completing tasks." An automatic cooking machine is far more reliable than a robot that can't cook well. A useful cleaning robot doesn't need to walk, dance, or practice Tai Chi like a human.
What we need is not to bring "future fantasies" into reality, but to use engineering capabilities to改造 reality.