Author |Mangosteen.
Produced by |Zinc industry.
On December 13, Tesla updated a humanoid robot ** on its official Twitter, in:
The second-generation Optimus Prime, which was launched at the end of this year, is much more rounded, its movements are much smoother, and the control of pressure by its dexterous hands has allowed it to hold an egg well.
This is the second year that Musk has taken the lead in setting off a humanoid robot boom, and this year, under the policy spring breeze and capital pursuit, the Chinese humanoid robot industry has ushered in an unprecedented wave of benefits.
UBTECH is one of the beneficiaries of this positive trend.
In September 2022, Tesla's generation of humanoid robots sitting on steel supports slowly moved to the stage of Tesla's AI Day with the support of three gentlemen.
This robot with a good skin and no special skills at the time was called Optimus, which is Optimus Prime.
Before Optimus Prime appeared, Musk also let Optimus Prime's "younger brother", Bumblebee (Bumblebee), show off his muscles on stage.
Bumblebee is a prototype of a humanoid robot made by Tesla using ready-made parts, characterized by a certain degree of movement, through Bumblebee, Musk intends to show the world the "soft power" of the Tesla team in humanoid robots.
On the stage of Tesla AI Day on this day, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime are like an era alternation:
Bumblebee integrates the technological crystallization of "prehistoric civilizations" as much as possible, and Optimus Prime heralds the arrival of a new era
What's more, after Optimus Prime, the world enteredA new era of trying to create a robot civilization through artificial intelligence
As the world's factory, humanoid robots have also been highly valued in China, and guiding policies to promote the development of the robot industry have been promulgated in this year.
In October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which pointed out:
By 2025, to:Brain, cerebellum, limbsand a number of key technologies have made breakthroughs, and initially established an innovation system for humanoid robots
Nurturing2-3 eco-enterprises with global influencewithA group of specialized, special and new small and medium-sized enterprises
Build2-3 industrial development clusters, nurture and develop a number of new businesses, new models and new formats.
The issuance of the "Guiding Opinions" has pointed out the direction for the next step of economic development planning and technology industry investment in various provinces and cities in China, especially the model of the robot industry development agglomeration area, which has become a key project of many urban planning, especiallyBeijing, ShanghaiwithShenzhen
Shenzhen issued the "Shenzhen Action Plan for Cultivating and Developing Intelligent Robot Industry Clusters (2022-2025)" in June 2022, which pointed out that by 2025, new ones will be added1 manufacturing innovation center at or above the provincial level, 10 manufacturing "single champions", specialized and new "little giants", "unicorn" enterprises, 20 enterprise technology centers.
The "Shenzhen Action Plan for Accelerating the High-quality Development and High-level Application of Artificial Intelligence (2023-2024)" issued in May this year once again pointed outAccelerate the establishment of Guangdong Province Humanoid Robot Manufacturing Innovation CenterGive full play to the advantages of the manufacturing industry in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and carry out the large-scale application of humanoid robots.
Shanghai is in March 2023 issued the "Shanghai Intelligent Robot Benchmarking Enterprises and Application Scenarios Recommended Catalog", which proposes to strive to create 10 industry-leading robot head brands and 100 benchmark demonstration robot application scenarios by 2025100 billion yuan of robot-related industry scale
Beijing issued the "Beijing Robot Industry Innovation and Development Action Plan (2023-2025)" in June 2023, which clearly statesExpeditedBuild Beijing Humanoid Robot Industry Innovation Center and strive to become a national manufacturing innovation center.
How fast is that?
Just last month, on November 2, the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center was officially established in Yizhuang.
Such an unprecedentedly favorable opportunity has made the humanoid robot team, which originally invested heavily in R&D but was not supported by a commercial system, became a sweet spot for a while.
Countless entrepreneurial teams have frantically poured in, and the few "aborigines" of humanoid robots have become the objects of competition for the establishment of humanoid robot innovation centers and industrial bases in various places.
UBTECH is such a team that has persevered to the "Optimus Prime Era" in the midst of all kinds of cheers and doubts.
In Zhou Jian's self-report interview, before founding UBTECH, he was the manager of the China region of Maccura Weili Machinery Group in Germany, and then started his own business, still making automated production line products.
Founded UBTECH, yesIn 2012of things.
Before that, he was touched by the humanoid robot performance he saw during an exhibition in Japan in 2008, which made him decide to start a business to make humanoid robots, but at that time, he started a small humanoid robot, which later became Alpha 1S.
Hardware entrepreneurship has always been known for burning moneyHumanoid robots are no exception, even if they are just small humanoid robots that are jokingly called toys.
Therefore, in the first few years of entrepreneurship, Zhou Jian invested all the net worth he had earned before, and later had the difficult experience of selling luxury houses and luxury cars.
It is easy to go from thrift to luxury, and it is difficult to go from luxury to thrift.
When Zhou Jian later recalled this experience, he confessed to **Regretted it", but already".It's hard to ride a tiger
Fortunately, humanoid robots were still a novelty at that time, and after the Alpha 1S was launched, the annual shipments once sold 50,000 or 60,000 units, of which more than half were sold overseas by UBTECH, which also attracted investment and blood transfusion from Qiming, Dingxuan, iFLYTEK, etc.
It was decided to establish a project to develop a large humanoid robot, yesAugust 2015of things.
Looking at the world, at that time, in addition to the Internet celebrity Boston Dynamics Atlas on YouTube, most of the large humanoid robots were still in the top university laboratories, and there were very few teams that really had the courage to start from the prototype and try to pull the large humanoid robot into the real world.
As far as the development of the robot industry is concerned, this is a difficult and correct thing, but it is also a thing that will not see the prospect of commercialization in five or ten years.
On this long road, most business teams that enter this field will fall before large humanoid robots push open the door to the business world.
UBTECH completed the development of the first large-scale humanoid robot prototype in June 2016.
At that time, this oneOnly the lower body of the "humanoid robot" height 12m and weighs 20kg, with two long legs of 12 degrees of freedom, is mainly to verify the walking ability of humanoid robots, that is, gait algorithms.
As a key technology in the field of motion control of humanoid robots, the quality of gait algorithms directly determines whether humanoid robots can "walk" and "walk a few steps".
In this regard, there has always been a big competition in the world with the proposition of robot football game - robocup.
UBTECH also formed a relationship with the team of Professor Zhao Mingguo of Tsinghua University in this competition, and the two teams were not only formed together laterVulcan(Hephaestus), who has won the Humanoid Robot Adult Size Group Technical Challenge many timesRunner-up, and also have in-depth cooperation in algorithms.
However, the research and development of large humanoid robots is a far more expensive project than the development of small humanoid robotsCOO raises CTOIn fact, the development route of the enterprise is to make money to do research and development.
As for how to make money, UBTECH has found a good trackEducational Robot Track
Zhou Jian's first robot Alpha 1S at the beginning of his business actually came with programming capabilities, but after Alpha 1S was launched, this product was once purchased by consumers as a high-end toy.
However, with the rapid expansion of the software development market in those years, programming education has become a global phenomenon, especially in 2017"New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan".Make it clear that you want toPromote the introduction of coding courses into primary and secondary schoolsLater, programming robots naturally became the best track at that time.
StillThe real turning point of UBTECH's business development was in 2016
This year, 540 units of alpha 1s danced on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, allowing UBTECH to enter the public eye for the first time, and the Spring Festival Gala not only increased the sales of UBTECH robots, but also brought many cooperation opportunities to it.
For example, UBTECH co-branded with Disney and cooperated with Amazon, and its other STEM educational programming robot series products, Jimu robots, have even entered nearly 500 offline stores of Apple around the world.
Also in 2016, UBTECH was completed$100 million in financingValuationPromoted to$1 billion, officially announcedProfessor Zhao Guoming of Tsinghua UniversitywithProfessor Tao Dacheng, University of Sydneyof the franchise.
In his speech at the strategic conference at the end of 2016, Zhou Jian proudly said, "In 2016, UBTECH's sales were 300 million yuan, and in 2017, this figure will reach 10-1.5 billion yuan." ”
At this point, UBTECH's halo has been added and it has begun to run towards a real unicorn company.
2019 is a very special year for China**.
This year, after many preparations, a name calledScience and Technology Innovation BoardThe new section is listed on the Shanghai ** Exchange.
There is no doubt that in order to encourage scientific and technological innovation, the Science and Technology Innovation Board is a new section set up separately on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which was clearly pointed out in the "Implementation Opinions on the Establishment of the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the Pilot Registration System on the Shanghai ** Exchange" issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission in January 2019
The Science and Technology Innovation Board will focus on supporting high-tech industries and strategic emerging industries such as new generation information technology, high-end equipment, new materials, new energy, energy conservation and environmental protection, and biomedicineInternet, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligenceDeep integration with the manufacturing industry.
It was also at this time that the news of UBTECH's preparation for listing was confirmed.
At a press conference in February 2019, Zhou Jian clearly pointed out that "UBTECH will strive for domestic listing at a valuation of 10 billion this year." ”
At that time, the industry generally believed that UBTECH might be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and there was even speculation that UBTECH might be the first batch of listed companies on the Science and Technology Innovation Board.
However, it backfired.
On March 22, 2019, the Shanghai Stock Exchange announced the list of 9 companies that applied for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and there was no UBTECH in the list
On March 27, 2019, the Shanghai Stock Exchange announced the list of 8 companies that applied for listing on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, but there was still no UBTECH in the list.
UntilIn April 2019, UBTECH conducted listing counseling and filing with the Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau, officially entered the listing counseling period.
This is the first time UBTECH has received listing counseling, and this two-year listing counseling ended in February 2021 with a "report on the termination of UBTECH's counseling work" from CICC, a UBTECH listing counseling institution.
UBTECH was not able to be listed on the A-share market in the end, but in the past two years, UBTECH's large-scale humanoid robot has undergone many iterations.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in the United States, every year there are technology companies from all over the world to showcase their most cutting-edge technologies and products, and at CES 2019, UBTECH showcased a 1A 45-meter-tall humanoid robot with 36 servo motors on its body.
The humanoid robot, called Walker, is an upgraded version of the bipedal humanoid robot shown at CES 2018, and this time the humanoid robot with two arms was shown at CESOpen the ice door, hand the umbrella, hand the potato chipsand other movements, and even some dance moves.
The 2019 UBTECH Walker is very close to people's fantasies about robots in appearance, and can also pose some familiar actions to humans, but such humanoid robots are still very far away from entering the family.
In this regard, Zhou Jian also said in an interview with Sina Technology in 2020, "I want to enter family services."It will take at least another 5-10 years, or even longer. ”
However, as a unicorn company that has been established for ten years, has raised billions of dollars and has a valuation of more than 10 billion, it is obvious that it cannot wait another 10 years.
On the evening of January 31, 2023, UBTECH submitted its prospectus again, and this time, UBTECH chose the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
From the publicly disclosed prospectus, the zinc industry found the following key information:
1. UBTECH has 1,750 patents for robotics and artificial intelligence, of which 350 are overseas patents
2. The proportion of education and logistics robots in enterprise revenue from 2020 to 2022 is in order. 3%；
3. The sales proportion of the walker series from 2020 to 2022 is as follows. 8%, of which, 1 complete machine was sold in 2021 and 8 complete machines were sold in 2022;
The revenue in 2022 will be 7400 million yuan, 8200 million yuan, 10100 million yuan, R&D expenditure was 4300 million yuan, 5200 million yuan, 4300 million yuan, the loss was 7100 million yuan, 9200 million yuan, 9900 million yuan.
From these data we can find:
UBTECH is still in useEducational robots are the main revenue**R&D investment in humanoid robots is still hugeEven if UBTECH has hundreds of millions of yuan in revenue every year, it is difficult to cover its high investment in R&D and marketing.
Unable to make ends meet is still the common status quo of humanoid robot R&D teams like Youxuan.
If you want to continue to develop humanoid robots, you need to find new revenue growth points, continue to raise funds or go public.
In the former, UBTECH has further launched robot products for scenarios such as sanitizing logistics, industrial manufacturing, and health care in recent years
The latter, UBTECH finally officially passed the hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 1 this year, and is expected to be officially listed on December 29.
It is worth noting that just before UBTECH's listing, Yizhuang Guotou injected 500 million yuan into UBTECHParticipated in the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center
Under the tide of this year's new round of artificial intelligence technology, in the upsurge of embodied intelligence, in the process of promoting the construction of the humanoid robot industry in various places, a consensus has been basically reached in various places:
It is necessary to encourage the research and development of humanoid robot technology, support the listing of humanoid robot enterprises, and promote the establishment of humanoid robot innovation centers led by backbone humanoid robot enterprises and integrating resources
2023 is a rare window period for robot companies, especially humanoid robot companies.
That is, in the entrepreneurial boom of humanoid robots, when established robot companies announced the mass production of humanoid robots at the end of 2023, UBTECH, which was the first share of humanoid robots, finally waited for the listing.