Robot Companions Are Selling Like Hotcakes: UBTECH's U1 Logs ¥2.2 Billion in One Day
China’s embodied-intelligence robots are iterating at a visibly accelerating pace. A “companion-type” humanoid robot — one that can only be sold to adults — has arrived.
Key Facts at a Glance
- Product: UBTECH U1 series — the world’s first mass-market humanoid companion robot
- Launch date: June 30, 2026, Shenzhen, China
- Price range: ¥119,800 (U1 Lite) to ¥990,000 (U1 Ultra male version)
- Day-one pre-orders: 13,361 units across all channels — a bionic robot industry record
- Day-one order value: Over ¥2.2 billion — exceeding UBTECH’s full-year 2025 revenue of ¥2.001 billion
- Core capability: Emotion large model recognizing 20+ fine-grained emotions with >90% accuracy
- Positioning: Companionship only — no housework
On June 30, UBTECH unveiled its ultra-bionic humanoid robot, the U1 series, in Shenzhen. The series comes in three versions:
- U1 Lite, half-body model — ¥119,800
- U1 Pro, full-body model — ¥169,800
- U1 Ultra, male version — ¥990,000; female version — ¥880,000
The high prices drew audible gasps from the audience. Even more astonishing was the scramble to buy. According to official figures, on launch day the U1 series racked up more than 13,361 cumulative orders across all channels — the highest pre-sale volume in the history of bionic robots.
Roughly calculated at the U1 Pro price of about ¥170,000, the order value on June 30 alone exceeded ¥2.2 billion — while UBTECH’s full-year 2025 revenue was a mere ¥2.001 billion. Capital markets reacted quickly: UBTECH (9880.HK) finished at HK$102.8 per share, up 7.48%, having surged more than 18% intraday.
What Is a Companion Robot? No Housework — Only Companionship
A key distinction of the U1 series is its explicit product boundary: no housework — only companionship. UBTECH is sidestepping the “labor” logic that has long stalled humanoid robot commercialization, and pivoting instead toward emotion and companionship — a direction validated by the explosive growth of otome games and AI companion apps.
Inside the Launch: Waltzing with “Xiao You”
The moment you walk into the UBTECH launch event, the strongest impression is not “technological” but a more complicated judgment: it is hard to immediately classify what you are looking at as a machine. You know the thing in front of you is not a real person, but your visual system needs a moment to confirm it.
At the venue, bionic robots stood at the reception desk; in the hospital-consultation area, a bionic robot sat behind the consultation table. Their eyes moved and tracked you, they waited for your response, gave verbal feedback, and showed micro-expressions. The touch was also lifelike — silicone skin.
When the event officially began, the lights dimmed and the stage lit up. A female bionic robot walked onstage — her name was “Xiao You.” A giant screen behind her projected a starry-sky effect; music played, and she danced a waltz beneath the stars.
Xiao You’s movements were not as fluid as a real person’s; there were perceptible pauses, as if waiting for a signal to reach her limbs. Yet most people were not disappointed — instead they felt an indescribable awe. The things we thought existed only in imagination are appearing before our eyes in a clumsy, imperfect, but real way.
Why Can’t Companion Robots Do Housework?
Many at the venue asked whether these bionic robots could actually do housework. The answer reveals a fundamental robotics challenge: housework looks simple but is a completely different order of problem.
UBTECH’s industrial robot Walker S operates in standardized factory environments. The home, by contrast, has no standardization — tables may be strewn about, cups come in different shapes, surroundings change dynamically. Companion robots must handle infinite variability in human interaction — a problem better suited to today’s rapidly advancing language models and multimodal AI.
Two Bets, Two Technology Routes
Industrial humanoids converge toward AGI — understanding real-world environments, completing complex tasks, handling ever-changing variables. This path requires vast real-world data, making it a long-horizon bet.
Companion humanoids go straight into continuous human interaction. Their capabilities depend on language models, multimodal understanding, and interaction design — precisely the fastest-advancing frontier of AI today. They do not need to wait for AGI to commercialize.
The U1’s biggest technological breakthrough: the industry’s first emotion large model for long-term companionship, recognizing more than 20 fine-grained emotions with over 90% accuracy.
Could Companion Robots Reshape the Adult and Dating Market?
Brokerage research projects a near-trillion-yuan companion robot market: Guotai Junan estimates roughly ¥420 billion potential among China’s elderly and ¥500 billion among youth — nearly ¥1 trillion combined.
Zhou Jian noted the otome-game segment is a very large vertical market, and if ethics, technology, and other conditions mature, UBTECH is “very likely to enter this industry” — adding: some IPs have already come knocking.
The structural logic is familiar: in Love and Producer, users pay for a stable personality relationship — controllable, predictable, persistent. Humanoid robots are now attempting to pull that relationship structure out of the screen and into real space. It is as if the film Her has stepped into reality.
