After researching the Chinese humanoid robot industry chain, Morgan Stanley: The technology route has not yet been unified, and the industry chain is accelerating cost reduction

Yushu Technology's robots exploded in popularity overnight, and Tesla's Optimus has captured significant attention. Currently, the A-share market's robotics concept stocks have surged, with global tech giants betting on humanoid robots.

What stage is China's humanoid robot industry currently in? Morgan Stanley conducted in-depth research on China's automation and humanoid robot industry chain from February 17 to 21, visiting multiple companies including those involved in screws, reducers, motors, and sensors, and released a comprehensive research report on China's industrial humanoid robot industry.

The Morgan Stanley report pointed out that although there has been rapid progress in motion control, achieving practical applications for humanoid robots still requires continuous improvements in algorithms and hardware, but China's humanoid robot industry is showing signs of accelerated development.

A key finding is that most Chinese manufacturers plan to achieve mass production of hundreds to thousands of humanoid robots by 2025.

Leading domestic players like Agibot are expanding their order sizes to meet their aggressive production targets for 2025. Leju expects sales to reach 500-1000 units by 2025, while MagicBot aims to sell 400 units in 2025 and expand to 15,000 units by 2027.

The report noted that, aside from the "brain" (i.e., chips) still relying on high-end AI chips from abroad, almost all humanoid robot body parts can be produced domestically in China. Domestic components have been widely used by domestic humanoid robot companies, and some companies are actively seeking to enter the supply chains of international giants like Tesla.

Although Tesla has higher hardware requirements than domestic manufacturers, leading Chinese humanoid robot component manufacturers are striving to collaborate directly with Tesla or through first-tier actuator assemblers like Sanhua and Topband, aiming to penetrate Tesla's supply chain.

Despite many component suppliers claiming they have developed and sent products to integrators (including Tesla) for testing, capacity construction (equipment and experienced technicians/workers) and capacity enhancement (precision processing, product consistency) are very challenging in the initial years, affecting efficiency, output, and costs.

Additionally, Morgan Stanley emphasized that companies in China's humanoid robot industry chain generally view "cost reduction" as key, with scalability, automation levels, and output enhancement being crucial to lowering costs.

Through technological upgrades, localization of equipment, and large-scale production, it is expected to significantly reduce the manufacturing costs of humanoid robots.

Chinese players (humanoid robot integrators and component suppliers) aim to significantly lower costs: Leju's current cost has decreased from 700,000 RMB in 2024 to 400,000 RMB, with a target of further reducing it to 200,000 RMB by the end of 2025; Kepler guides a selling price of 30,000 USD (approximately 218,000 RMB) per unit.

With the expansion of production scale, component prices are also expected to decline significantly. The price of planetary ball screws and six-axis force/torque sensors may drop to below 1,000 RMB per unit in the long term; the price of harmonic reducers will decrease from the current price of over 1,000 RMB per unit to a few hundred RMB.

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