Beijing-based Galaxy AI is shooting for the top of the global robotics market with R1 humanoids.
existAn undescribable building In Beijing’s Middle Agriculture District (sometimes called China’s Silicon Valley), a sultry training event is taking place in July afternoon. In a small, cluttered lab where Chinese robots start Galaxy AI, a young employee switched the switch to guide the basic-mounted robot arm to turn on nearby lights. His colleagues documented a pair of mechanical weapons that flattened the wrinkled sheets while trying to bed.
These image and video clips will be used to help train the company’s proprietary AI models to power the R1 series’ wheel-based humanoids. Their height is 1.7 meters and is designed to help the factory, and in the not too distant future, in the house. This is an ambitious goal for a two-year-old outfit in an industry racing car to deliver the next generation of robots expected to change everyday life.
“Our industry is actually growing very fast,” said Xu Huazhe, 32-year-old co-founder and co-chief science officer at Galaxy AI. “To show our progress, we need to work harder and faster.”
Xu said Galaxy AI received a list of 100 small-viewing companies and startups last year, and the name of AI is derived from the terms “Galaxy” and “Sea”, reflecting the challenges the co-founders faced along the way, which reflects the co-founders’ shooting ambitions. Added by Stanford University’s well-trained spoken soft-speaking engineer, the first goal is to deploy R1 robots at large scale across assembly lines over the next three years.
Automation has already played a major role in manufacturing, according to a nonprofit International Federation of Robots (IFR), which supports robot research, and China is the world leader in installing industrial robots on its factory floors (the highest robot density per 10,000 employees) and Singapore. Galaxy AI’s R1 human creatures are designed to repetitive tasks, for example, when building cars that still require humans to assemble hundreds, sometimes thousands of individual components.
Apart from the workplace, Xu confidently predicts that his robot will be ready for home use in less than a decade to help cook, sweep, and get the perfectly made bed. Investors are buying this vision. In July, Galaxy AI raised more than $100 million in Series A funds, including Hong Kong-based capital, Chinese fintech company Ant Group and local service giant Meituan’s VC ARM Longz Investments, with an estimated price of $700 million. Xu said more fundraising is underway, with a target value of $1 billion as the company re-prepared its first yet-unnamed bipedal human, launching in 2026.
The full-size double-arm R1 machine that Galaxy AI started selling in the second half of last year costs between $320,000 and $459,900 (approximately $44,500 to $64,000), depending in part on the bundled accessories such as the five-finger robot hand, not the five-finger robot hand, not the two-ticket. Xu said the company aims to ship up to 1,000 vehicles by December to December, half of which comes from sales in China, including half of the U.S., including major markets for U.S. international expansion.
R1 Pro
Provided by Galaxy AI
The shipping target may sound modest, but Xu is seeing the bigger picture. Phyllis Wang, an analyst at Shanghai-based UBS Securities, said that by 2035, the world will be inhabited by 2 million humanoid robots and will ship 15,000 units this year. By 2050, their figures are expected to rise to 300 million, bringing the total market value of such machines, including components and software, to $1.7 trillion.
The battle for gaining a foothold in the space has led to a collision course for Galaxy AI with other jammers at home and overseas, including Tesla’s avant-garde Optimus model. The billionaire founder of the American tech giant, Elon Musk, wrote in a July X post that the robot will start sending food orders to customers next year at Tesla’s futuristic driving restaurants. Nevertheless, even if Musk believes Optimus Prime will rank first in the humanoid market in April’s analyst calls, he expressed concern: “In the rankings, two to ten will be Chinese companies.”
The rise of robots
Global human populations are expected to grow rapidly over the next decade, led by China and the United States
Source: Bank of America Global Research, UBS Securities
“Humanoid robots have human-shaped bodies, usually including the head, torso and two arms, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Whether such robots can be bipedals, while both wheels and legs are considered maneuverable.”
Xu believes Galaxy AI is a major competitor, pointing to the talent pool of the company’s top scientists and engineers, and the mission of building better robots. The company is not here yet, but progress is made: in August, it launched the G0, an AI model that can help robots better understand verbal orders, reason and perform relatively complex tasks (such as beds). The model builds on a robotic behavior dataset collected by Galaxy AI in real-world environments including houses, shops, and offices. The company also said it will allow others to access the dataset as it tries to support the development of human organisms around the world. Even so, the dynasty king warns that, in general, the technology may take some time to facilitate robots to help humans in meaningful ways in daily life.
Among Galaxy AI’s clients are AI companies in the U.S. and Stanford University, which has worked with Chinese companies to train R1 to perform tasks such as garbage and cleaning bathrooms. Xu refused to name his industrial customers, citing no disclosure of the agreement, but he said Chinese automakers will use the R1 to ship goods on factory floors starting later this year. The company did not record any revenue in 2024, but expected sales to reach tens of millions of yuan this year and hopes to make a profit in 2026.
“They are preparing for society to realize the future next to human creatures.”
Reyk Knutsen, a robotics analyst at Florida Research, said Galaxy AI has a good team but faces fierce domestic competition. There may be about 30 to 40 humanoid biomakers in China, and it is estimated that BOFA Global Research’s Hong Kong-based analyst Ming Hsun Lee. He compared the fledgling market with China’s electric vehicle sector a decade ago, when many companies were fighting for fragments as Beijing encouraged the development of electric vehicles as a new pillar of growth.
With the aging population and expected labor shortage, China is pushing for the development of humanoids with state-led funds: In March, Beijing announced it would build $138 billion in funding to invest in robotics and other high-tech industries. To help its 1.4 billion people feel satisfied with the lives of the machines, the government hosted events such as the First World Human Robot Game held in Beijing in August, with metal participants from 16 countries facing metal participants in football and taekwondo to dance events. “They are preparing society for the future of human creatures,” said Susanne Bieller, general secretary of the IFR.
From left to right: Gao Jiyang, Zhao Hang, Xu Huazhe and Li Tianwei
Provided by Galaxy AI
XU, separated his time Sean Wang, a partner at Investor Longz Investments, said he was considered a top scientist in his field between his startup and teaching robotics and AI as an assistant professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. The four-person founding team of Galaxy AI drew on their personal strengths, Xu and 34-year-old Zhao Hang are another chief science officer of the company, working on AI models and training humanoids in Beijing. Gao Jiyang is the 33-year-old CEO of Galaxy AI, working with 31-year-old COO Li Tianwei at the company’s Suzhou factory to oversee production and promote commercialization.
Xu said the company plans to expand to the top of 200 employees by the end of the year, starting from the current 120. He described how Gao, an AI software engineer who had previously been at self-driving companies including Waymo in the United States and Momensa in China, came up with the idea of Galaxy AI. Xu believes that the timing is correct, because this is due to the rapid development of AI.
The two met an undergraduate student who studied electrical engineering at Hindewa University, who grew up to GAO. Xu grew up in Changchun, the industrial city of Northeast China, and continued to pursue his doctorate. In an AI study at the University of California, Berkeley, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University focused on computer vision-related technologies. In 2022, Xu accepted a teaching job at Tsinghua and returned to China, launching Galaxy AI with GAO the following year.
One of Galaxy AI’s biggest local rivals is Unitree Robotics, a $1.7 billion (valuation) humanoid biomaker. The Hangzhou-based company recently made headlines with budget-friendly human voice and image recognition starting at $5,900. Xu said that due to economies of scale, he expects the cost of Galaxy to drop, making it a viable option for future consumers to use.
The scientist believes that there may be too many humanoid robot companies in China at present and predicts a wave of consolidation in the next three to five years. “After the bubble burst…only viable humanoid products will remain.”
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