China’s smartphone and electronics supply chain is adapting its expertise to support the country’s fledgling but fast-growing humanoid robotics industry, as component suppliers seek new growth beyond a slowing mobile market. The sector received a glimpse of that crossover after Honor’s humanoid robot D1, a dark-horse entrant from the smartphone maker, won Beijing’s recent robot half-marathon, beating established Chinese robotics names such as Unitree. Honor entered the humanoid robotics sector...
As the artificial intelligence race moves beyond language models into the physical world, Asia’s manufacturing and supply chain strengths could give it an edge over the US, says Granite Asia’s Jixun Foo. The veteran venture capitalist said the current wave of AI development, sparked by breakthroughs in foundation models over the past two years, had entered a new phase where physical applications – from robotics to industrial automation – were becoming increasingly important, playing to Asia’s...