Kunpeng Project
Text: Wang Huiying.
Edit Midnight
There is good news from the humanoid robot industry.
On December 1, Shenzhen UBTECH Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "UBTECH") passed the hearing and was ready to be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
As early as January this year, UBTECH has submitted a prospectus, and the updated prospectus has hit the capital market, indicating that it is one step closer to the "first share of humanoid robots".
Humanoid robots are not a new concept, 50 years have passed since the first humanoid robot, WABOT-1, landed. Half a century has passed, and with the improvement of technology, humanoid robots have attracted more and more attention from the market, and have also attracted the participation of technology giants.
In October 2022, Tesla's first humanoid robot, Optius, made its debut. At that time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk predicted that in the next three to five years, people would be able to buy an Optimus robot. Tesla's entry has ignited enthusiasm in the market, and tech giants such as Amazon and Samsung have also increased their investment in humanoid robots.
On October 23 of this year, Amazon tested the humanoid robot "Digit" developed by startup Agility Robotics in its fulfillment center, and DigiIt is responsible for Amazon's yellow box.
The addition of giants has made the humanoid robot industry more lively. If UBTECH is successfully listed, it will be an important node for UBTECH and the investors behind it, and it will also provide a reference sample for the humanoid robot industry.
The biggest feature of the so-called humanoid robot is that it resembles a human. This characteristic determines that humanoid robots need to have extremely high interaction forms and strong response speeds, which requires high technical level and cost investment of enterprises. Judging from UBTECH's current performance, the industry is still facing the dilemma of high investment and difficulty in making profits.
As ChatGPT leads the wave of large models, the interactivity and understanding of large model training AI are very compatible with humanoid robots.
It's an uneven road, but one with promising prospects. Listing is only the first step of UBTECH, how to maintain an advantage in the competition with giants and find a better business model to improve the valuation is the key to UBTECH's next stage.
In 2023, with the advancement of AI technology, people's imagination of humanoid robots is getting bigger and bigger, and the market for humanoid robots is also attracting attention.
As a leading start-up company, UBTECH has hit the listing twice this year, and now it has passed the hearing in the Hong Kong stock market, which means that UBTECH is only one step away from listing.
Like all companies, UBTECH needs to be tested by the capital market before going public, and the most important thing is to answer the question of how to make money.
Through the prospectus, UBTECH also put the real business situation on the table.
According to the prospectus, from 2020 to the first half of 2023, UBTECH's revenue will be 7400 million yuan, 81.7 billion yuan, 100.8 billion yuan, 26.1 billion yuan.
In terms of segmentation, UBTECH's revenue comes from enterprise-level intelligent service robots and intelligent service robot solutions, consumer-level robots and other hardware equipment, and other three parts.
In other words, UBTECH chooses to walk on two legs in the To B and To C business.
Among them, educational intelligent robots support half of UBTECH's revenue. According to the prospectus data, from 2020 to the first half of 2023, the revenue of UBTECH's educational intelligent robot products and solutions accounted for the total revenue respectively. 2% and 29%.
Wukong Educational Robot, picture source UBTECH official website
However, as UBTECH said in the prospectus, the use cycle of educational intelligent robot products is long, and educational institutions are unlikely to repeat purchases in the short term, which is likely to affect UBTECH's revenue.
On this basis, in order to reduce its dependence on the education field, UBTECH has developed revenue channels such as logistics and customization in other industries in recent years.
From 2020 to 2022, the proportion of educational robot revenue has decreased year by year, which also proves this. In contrast, from 2020 to the first half of 2023, the revenue proportion of UBTECH's logistics intelligent robots is. 4；The revenue proportion of customized robots in other industries is as follows. 5%。
It is a fact that although UBTECH has developed two major businesses, to B and to C, and diversified its revenue segments, humanoid robots are still facing the problem of commercialization. Embodied in UBTECH, it is a two-year loss.
According to the prospectus, between 2020 and the first half of 2023, UBTECH's loss will be 70.7 billion yuan, 917.5 billion yuan, 987.4 billion yuan and 547.9 billion yuan.
In parallel with the continuous losses, UBTECH's gross profit margin declined, and from 2020 to the first half of 2023, its gross profit margin were. 2% and 202%。
In this regard, UBTECH's explanation is that "it is mainly due to the gross profit margin of educational hardware products and services and software, from 62 in the first half of 2022."3% to 66%。This was due to a decrease in revenue from the sale of Alpha Mini Goku (education) and ukit building robots and building blocks (education) accessories."
It is worth noting that the current manufacturing cost of the humanoid robot industry is still very high.
From 2020 to the first half of 2023, UBTECH's R&D expenditure will be 428.8 billion yuan, 517.1 billion yuan, 428.3 billion yuan, 224.3 billion yuan, accounting for the total revenue of the same period. 3% and 859%。
From the perspective of key indicators, UBTECH's R&D costs over the years have not yet improved its profitability. But this is a common problem in the industry, which takes time and requires the joint efforts of players.
Standing under the tuyere, UBTECH will be re-examined by capital with a more rigorous vision. On the way to the capital market, it is important to find more commercial solutions. How to find a balance between input and income is a test for UBTECH's future.
UBTECH first entered the public eye in 2016 at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. At that time, 540 Alpha 1S robots developed by UBTECH danced together on the stage, and in addition to dancing, Alpha 1S robots could also play boxing and tai chi.
The "human-like" robot, which has a sense of science and technology, has dazzled the audience and attracted the attention of well-known capital.
alpha 1s at the 2016 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, picture source: UBTECH's official website
Half a year later, in July 2016, UBTECH received $100 million in financing from CDH Capital, iFLYTEK and other companies, with a post-investment valuation of $1 billionIn May 2018, UBTECH completed 8The $200 million Series C financing has received investment from more than 20 institutions such as Tencent and Easyhome, and the company's valuation has reached $5 billion.
Since its establishment in 2012, UBTECH has completed multiple rounds of financing, and many well-known enterprises and investment institutions have participated in the investment, including Tencent, Qiming Chuangming, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, CDH Investment, iFLYTEK, Thailand's CP, Haier, Telstra, Easyhome, Minsheng**, CITIC Goldstone, CMBC International, CGNPC, Songhe Capital, and many other well-known enterprises and investment institutions.
Tencent Holdings holds UBTECH 648% of the shares, the largest institutional shareholder. Xia Zuoquan, co-founder of BYD and chairman of Zhengxuan Investment, invested in UBTECH as an angel investor, and is still one of the company's major shareholders and directors, holding 578%, which is the largest individual shareholder other than the founder.
It is worth mentioning that Tencent is currently its largest institutional shareholder, holding 648%。
With a slow business process on the one hand and high R&D costs on the other, UBTECH must find an investment institution that can provide it with a steady stream of blood transfusions. The reason why investment institutions bet on UBTECH is also because they see the potential of UBTECH.
Before becoming the "first stock of humanoid robots", UBTECH's most imaginative product was the humanoid robot.
In 2016, UBTECH invested in the research and development of a large-scale humanoid robot, Walker, which has gone through 4 iterations so far. The latest prospectus shows that since fiscal year 2021, UBTECH has sold 10 Walkers.
Walker-X, source UBTECH's official website.
According to Tan Min, CBO of UBTECH, at the 36Kr WISE conference, during the 6-month working time of the China Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai, Walker provided more than 1,200 hours of service, creating a record for humanoid robots in public service places so far, and it is also the first case of commercial service of humanoid robots.
At the same time, UBTECH is also the first company in the world to reduce the cost of bipedal life-size humanoid robots to less than $100,000. Fu Chunjiang, vice president of UBTECH, has said that it is expected that around 2025, the cost of humanoid robots can be reduced to 50,000 US dollars, or a little higher.
Such achievements are inseparable from UBTECH's deep cultivation of research and development over the years. According to the prospectus, as of June 30, 2023, UBTECH's full-stack technology has 1,800 patents related to robotics and artificial intelligence, of which more than 380 are overseas patents.
Behind the achievements is UBTECH's continuous and high-intensity investment in real gold. According to the prospectus, during the reporting period, UBTECH's total R&D investment was nearly 1.6 billion yuan, and the average R&D expenditure accounted for 56% of the total revenue5%。
As UBTECH mentioned in the prospectus, UBTECH's R&D focuses on the core technology of humanoid robots, and has been focusing its R&D work on promoting the core technologies used in humanoid robots, such as computer vision, voice interaction, servo drives, motion planning and control, and the integration and combination of positioning and navigation.
However, due to the embryonic stage of the humanoid robot industry, the technical maturity is limited, and it is still too early to talk about commercialization. UBTECH also reminded in the prospectus that the degree of comparison between UBTECH and its peers in humanoid robots is limited. The global humanoid robots and robotic solutions industry is still in the early stages of technological exploration and development, with limited market players and the large-scale commercialization of humanoid robots has not yet been achieved.
At present, in the entire intelligent service robot market, the share of humanoid robots is not high. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the market size of Chinese humanoid robots and robot solutions is expected to be about 9.9 billion yuan in 2028, accounting for about 54%。
This means that there are plenty of opportunities for the players on the field. As the first representative to land in the capital market, UBTECH may still focus on humanoid robots in the future, which is also the focus of investors. At the same time, as one of the few humanoid robot companies that has been commercialized, UBTECH's development and financial status will also continue to be concerned.
Entering 2023, under the east wind of AI large models, the climax of the humanoid robot industry has quietly arrived.
In the past few decades, due to the constraints of technology, humanoid robots have rarely made real breakthroughs. In essence, humanoid robots used to rely on algorithms to have a certain degree of intelligence, but they only stayed at the primary level, stagnating on the road to infinitely close to "humans".
For example, humanoid robots can do dancing, warehousing and other behaviors, and in terms of the most complex language logic ability and dialogue comprehension ability of human beings, it is difficult for humanoid robots in the past to reach the level of "human-like".
This year, the emergence of AI models represented by ChatGPT has injected new vitality into humanoid robots.
One conceivable scenario is that with the help of generative AI model technology, humanoid robots may evolve into robots with conversational understanding capabilities, which can mimic human language logic, talk to humans, and empower all walks of life.
In short, the integration of AI large models and humanoid robots may allow humanoid robots to truly "grow brains" and become robots as smart as humans, which is also regarded as one of the future landing scenarios of AI large models.
From this point of view, it is very important for humanoid robot companies to catch the fast train of AI large models.
According to Tan Min, CBTECH CBO, UBTECH is trying to realize the combination of large model + humanoid robot, and practice it in different application scenarios. In the future, UBTECH's humanoid robots will redefine workers in the era of artificial intelligence and liberate humans from repetitive labor around the three major scenarios of industrial manufacturing, commercial services and family companionship. The commercial service scenario is the fastest application market for humanoid robots, while the home landing scenario is the most potential application market for humanoid robots.
According to Wired Insight, UBTECH has launched a "multi-modal embodied intelligent system for humanoid robots" based on the Transformer framework. UBTECH's R&D team will have a layout for large models and other related technologies in 2020. With the further development and maturity of related technologies, starting from 2022, the team began to invest in the research and development of this intelligent system. At present, many departments, including UBTECH Research Institute and Humanoid Robot Division, have jointly invested in the research and development and iteration process of "Humanoid Robot Multimodal Embodied Intelligent System".
Before the AI model pushed the industry to a climax, the humanoid robot industry had attracted many tech giants to join.
The most representative is Tesla. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized that humanoid robots have become Tesla's most important product research and development project, and over time, this business may be more important than electric vehicles.
At Tesla's "AI Day" in 2022, Tesla's humanoid robot "Optimus" appeared, which is about 1.72 meters tall, weighs about 57 kilograms, can walk 8 kilometers per hour, and can carry 20 kilograms of items. According to Tesla, Optimus uses Tesla's most advanced AI technology, such as the visual nervous system, self-developed chips, and FSD hardware.
optimus, source Tesla's official website Weibo
From the perspective of the development of Optimus, Tesla's goal is to design humanoid robots that can be implemented and mass-produced while making technological breakthroughs. Musk said that the first version of Optimus is expected to go into production in 2023, and its price will be around $20,000, and mass production will be achieved in 3-5 years.
In addition, giants such as Amazon, Dyson, and Xiaomi are also developing humanoid robots in their respective fields to empower all walks of life.
Amazon has been involved in the industry by investing in Agility Robotics, and in October of this year, Amazon tested the bipedal robot developed by Agility Robotics
In May 2022, Dyson publicly stated that it would launch humanoid robots that can do housework in the next 10 years and build "the largest and most advanced robotics center in the UK", for which it will recruit thousands of employees and plan to invest 5 billion;
In China, Xiaomi also announced a self-developed full-size humanoid bionic robot cyberone (Tieda), Lei Jun said, the intelligence and mechanical capabilities behind cyberone, all of which were self-developed by the full-stack self-development of Xiaomi Robotics Lab.
Under the wave of AI, humanoid robots are regarded as one of the ultimate forms of AI landing. With the continuous maturity of technology, humanoid robots are expected to bring a trillion-level market. The goal of the entrepreneurs in the wave is very simple, when the humanoid robot gradually approaches the imagination of human beings, the humanoid robot can be successfully mass-produced, find an ideal business path, and share the cake with the giants.
It's going to be a tough business, a daunting and challenging task that requires patience and determination on the part of players in the industry.