AgiBot passes Unitree as the top humanoid vendor — Chinese makers ship 97% of the world's units

Research firm Smart Analytics Global reports that global humanoid robot shipments reached 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, up 272% year over year. Shanghai-based AgiBot shipped roughly 8,400 of them for a 44% share — a 562% year-on-year jump on a line-up spanning full-size bipedal A-series, compact X-series and wheeled G-series robots — displacing Hangzhou's Unitree, which shipped about 5,900 for 31%. Chinese vendors accounted for 97% of units shipped worldwide; Chinese buyers absorbed 85% of demand.

Why it matters

Two numbers do most of the work here. The first is 97%: on units shipped, the humanoid market is not a US-China race, it is a Chinese domestic market with exports attached, which is the context for a US ban on Chinese humanoids and for Beijing's retaliation threats. The second is 19,100 — the entire global half-year, across every vendor, is smaller than a single mid-size car plant's weekly output, so leadership here is a claim on a market that has not formed yet. That is the caution to apply to the ranking change: AgiBot passing Unitree on shipments while Unitree prices the sector's first IPO says the public-market benchmark and the volume leader are now different companies, and AgiBot is reported to be heading for a listing of its own. Shipments at this scale are also not the same as deployments — nothing in the data says how many of those 19,100 robots are doing work rather than sitting in labs and showrooms.

What to watch

Whether AgiBot's IPO follows Unitree's, whether either vendor discloses deployment (not shipment) figures, and whether the 97% share moves at all as US and European makers ramp.