Morgan Stanley Doubles China Humanoid Robot Forecast as Commercial Rollout Accelerates
Morgan Stanley has sharply raised its forecast for Chinese humanoid robot shipments in 2026 to 50,000 units, nearly doubling its previous estimate of 28,000, as commercialization of the technology accelerates far ahead of earlier expectations. This marks the second time this year the investment bank has revised its numbers upward — it began 2026 with a projection of just 14,000 units.
The bank now estimates that China’s humanoid robot market will reach $2 billion in 2026, surging to $15 billion by 2030, by which point annual shipments are expected to hit 446,000 units. According to CNBC, the revised forecast reflects a confluence of commercial validation, policy tailwinds, and increasingly mature supply chains.
“Commercial verification, policy support, and supply chain signals show that the adoption of humanoid robots in China is accelerating,” wrote Morgan Stanley equity analyst Sheng Zhong in the report.
China Moves to Dominate the Global Humanoid Race
The bullish outlook underscores China’s growing ambition to lead the global humanoid robotics industry. A growing number of Chinese companies are scaling up production, driving down manufacturing costs, and deploying embodied AI robots into real-world production environments. The Chinese government has designated embodied intelligence as a key future industry under the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, lending significant policy momentum to the sector.
Market research firm Omdia reported that 13,000 humanoid robots were shipped globally in 2025, with the top five positions all held by Chinese manufacturers. U.S. companies Figure AI and Tesla ranked only seventh and ninth, respectively — a stark illustration of how China has seized an early lead in the commercialization race.
‘Walk Into Any Chinese Factory’
Speaking at the Summer Davos forum in Liaoning, McKinsey Greater China chairman Joe Ngai framed humanoid robotics as a pivotal frontier for the country’s technological ambitions. “Humanoid robots may become the next frontier of China’s tech development,” Ngai said. “Many people only see robots dancing or startup roadshows, but what they should really be paying attention to is deployment in the industrial sector. If you walk into any factory in China today, you will find more robots deployed there than anywhere else in the world.”
The combination of aggressive government policy, a sprawling manufacturing base eager for automation, and a rapidly maturing domestic supply chain has created what analysts increasingly view as a flywheel effect — where scale drives down costs, lower costs expand deployment, and expanded deployment generates the data and iteration needed to improve capabilities. With Morgan Stanley now projecting a tenfold market expansion in just four years, the humanoid robotics sector appears to be crossing from laboratory curiosity to industrial reality at a pace few anticipated.