AINEWS
A former distributor for Chinese robot maker Unitree is building US humanoids in Plainview, N.Y., and finding that even a determined American shop still runs on Chinese batteries.
Spare humanoid heads and aluminum skeletons line the workbenches at Robo Inc.'s warehouse in Plainview, N.Y., where 30-year-old Teddy Haggerty is trying to build American humanoids on a suburban Long Island floor. The parts on those benches are also the reason the work is hard. Most of them still come from China.
Haggerty was Unitree Robotics' main North American distributor from 2022 until he left to start Robo Inc. The Chinese humanoid maker priced its initial public offering at a $9 billion valuation last week (CNBC). That figure is the cleanest measure of the lead Chinese humanoids have built. Haggerty now builds competing humanoids and quadrupeds for warehouse and healthcare customers. He told the AP that fully decoupling from Chinese parts was impractical, and that his own robots still import batteries and aluminum frames (AP via West Hawaii Today).
The admission lands at an awkward moment for US industrial policy. Washington has pushed to onshore humanoid production as part of a broader effort to keep strategic technology out of Chinese hands. NBC News reported that the US has moved to ban foreign-made humanoid robots over national security concerns, citing the risk that Chinese-built units could send data back to Beijing (NBC News). China has designated the humanoid industry a strategic priority, and Chinese firms produce the batteries, motor components, and aluminum castings that nearly every humanoid, US-made or not, depends on.
That supply-chain structure is what Haggerty is staring at. A humanoid is, at a high level, a battery, a structural frame, motors, sensors, and a control computer. Chinese manufacturers lead the first three categories by a wide margin, and the gap is structural rather than political: the tooling, the scale, and the cost curve all favor the existing Chinese supply base. The motor and battery cells that let a humanoid walk for a full shift are dominated by a small set of Chinese suppliers, and the lead time to bring a non-Chinese alternative to scale is measured in years, not quarters.
Haggerty's choice is to import those parts and sell a US-assembled robot, or build a more expensive unit that buyers may not pay for. He has picked the first path, and is candid that the result is a hybrid: American in labor, IP, and customer base, Chinese in the components that determine cost and performance. The robots Robo Inc. engineers adapt for warehouse and healthcare clients run on Chinese batteries and Chinese-cast aluminum skeletons. Haggerty's own forecast is that the global humanoid market will split regionally rather than resolve into a single contest: Chinese firms serving Chinese customers, US firms competing in the US, with overlap where regulation or customer trust makes geography matter more than price.
The forecast is Haggerty's, not a consensus view, and it depends on US industrial policy failing to reshore the load-bearing components. Federal battery subsidies could in theory close the gap on cells, but the most aggressive onshoring programs are still years from producing at the volumes a competitive humanoid would need. Aluminum frame castings and motor stacks face similar dynamics, with mature Chinese suppliers and thinner alternatives elsewhere in Korea, Japan, and Mexico.
The team's next milestone is moving its first warehouse pilots from prototype to paying customer. If those deals close in the next two quarters, Robo Inc. will be one of the first US firms to sell humanoids built in the US for US customers. The robots will still run on Chinese parts. That is the foreseeable shape of the market, on this shop floor at least, for the next several years.