China's Humanoid Robot Stocks Surge as Unitree, Xiangming Intelligent Lead Sector Rally

In early trading on November 9, Xiangming Intelligent (300660.SZ) sealed its 20% daily limit on the Shenzhen exchange. It was the clearest marker of a broad rally in China's A-share humanoid robot concept stocks that morning.

The move was not confined to one name. SWANCOR (688585.SS) briefly touched its own 20% limit during the session. Guangyang Co. (002708.SZ), Huapei Power and Aishida all hit their daily limits. Unitree Robotics, Hechuan Technology (688320.SS) and Jiangsu Leili each rose more than 10%. In Hong Kong, physical AI stocks climbed too: Galaxis Technology (02729.HK) jumped 47.26% to HK$13.99, about $1.8. UBTech (09880.HK) rose 12.40% to HK$72.5, about $9.2. Leaderdrive (03952.HK) gained 9.73% and Dobot (02432.HK) added 7.25%.

Several developments fed the rally. On November 5, at the AI and Chinese Modernization Forum of the 7th World Media Summit, the first bionic humanoid robot news anchors made their official debut. Xinhua News Agency and UBTech built them together, and they are named "Xin Yan" and "Xin Yu." Director Zhang Yimou served as chief image designer, and the robots are customized for news broadcasting.

Apple's research team also disclosed HALO, an autonomous control system for humanoid robots. It runs on Unitree's G1 robot and combines vision-language models with motion-generation technology. In the disclosure, the robot pushed boxes, sat on chairs and navigated obstacles in unfamiliar settings. The team ran 360 single-task tests across six real-world environments that had not been pre-scanned or mapped, and reported an average success rate of 91%. In a separate environment, three combined tasks were each tested 10 times, with an average success rate of 70%. The researchers noted that the robots rely mainly on visual perception, and that adding tactile perception is one direction for improvement.

Policy added to the momentum. Wei Wei, director of the Science and Technology Department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at an earlier State Council Information Office press conference that China produced more than 40,000 humanoid robots in the first half of the year. He said full-year output is expected to exceed 100,000 units. The ministry is running a special initiative on real-world training for humanoid robots and embodied intelligence. It is pushing products to speed up validation and deployment in more than 300 key scenarios, including warehousing and logistics, food and beverage retail, and home services.

Brokerages were fairly upbeat. Guotai Haitong Securities said global sentiment toward the industry keeps improving, with leading companies at home and abroad, Apple and Unitree among them, accelerating commercialization. It sees quality names in Chinese and overseas supply chains approaching an inflection point in earnings. Zheshang Securities argued that the bottleneck is moving from hardware bodies to data infrastructure and model training. In its view, embodied intelligence data collection, simulation platforms and real-world data feedback should see commercial opportunities first. Over the longer term, it expects physical simulation engines and world models to combine into a closed loop of virtual and real interaction data, speeding the adoption of physical AI in industrial manufacturing, robotics and other fields.

The market structure itself is notable. Speculative money has spread from complete-machine makers into supply-chain segments such as reducers, motors and materials. Component names including Xiangming Intelligent, Jiangsu Leili and Leaderdrive were among the top gainers, which points to rising expectations of mass-production orders.

The source cautions that the sector has already posted large short-term gains. What happens next depends on whether complete-machine shipment volumes and scenario validation actually arrive.