Economic Observer reporter Chen Qijie
Lead UBTECH (09880.)After becoming the "first stock of humanoid robots", Zhou Jian, founder, chairman and CEO (CEO) of UBTECH, said, "The listing and financing is only a phased progress, and the humanoid robot business still has a long way to go." ”
On December 29, 2023, UBTECH was officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and according to the announcement of the allotment results, the final offer price of the company's IPO (initial public offering) was HK$90 per share, raising a net proceeds of about 9HK$0.6 billion. As of January 10, UBTECH's total market capitalization was 371HK$4.7 billion.
Zhou Jian told the Economic Observer reporter that UBTECH is at a critical juncture in the commercialization of humanoid robots, and the listing does not mean that UBTECH will slow down, but it makes him feel that "time is running out".
According to public information, UBTECH has the world's very few humanoid robot full-stack technology (including computer vision, voice interaction, servo drive, motion planning and control, and positioning and navigation technology) capabilities, on this basis, the company carries out intelligent service robot solutions research and development, design, intelligent production and commercial application, its humanoid robot "Walker" is China's first commercial bipedal life-size humanoid robot.
In the past, Zhou Jian worked for a German listed machinery company, responsible for sales in Asia Pacific and China, and later founded a number of high-tech companies. In 2008, Zhou Jian gave up a high-paying job and a comfortable life to form a team to devote himself to the research and development and manufacturing of China's own intelligent robot business. In 2012, Zhou Jian founded UBTECH.
CommercializationTwo steps
According to the data, in fiscal year 2022 and the first half of 2023, UBTECH's operating income will be 100.8 billion and 26.1 billion yuan, with a net loss of 9$8.7 billion and $54.8 billion yuan.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, in terms of revenue in 2022, UBTECH ranks third in China's intelligent service robot and intelligent service robot solution industry, with a market share of 28%；The market share of China's educational intelligent robots and solutions industry is 225%, ranking first.
However, UBTECH's current main revenue comes from intelligent robots and solutions for education and logistics, accounting for 77% of total revenue in fiscal year 2022 and the first half of 2023, respectively3% and 584%。Even UBTECH, a company that is at the forefront of the commercialization of humanoid robots, believes that the current application scenarios in this field are limited, and the manufacturing cost is still high. From 2021 to the first half of 2023, UBTECH "Walker" series of humanoid robots will be 10 units, with a total confirmed revenue of 59.8 million yuan.
After triggering a wave of discussions, UBTECH's share price did not fluctuate much in more than a week after landing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, basically maintaining the issue price of about HK$90 shares.
Zhou Jian said that compared with the company's stock price, he is more concerned about making the company's operating conditions healthier and making humanoid robot products land faster in industrial and family scenarios.
He believes that intelligent manufacturing will become the first large-scale application field of humanoid robots, which will redefine workers in the AI (artificial intelligence) era and free people from repetitive labor; The commercial service scenario is the fastest application market for humanoid robots, and the home landing scenario is the most potential application market for humanoid robots.
In the industrial manufacturing scenario, the humanoid robot "Walker X" launched by UBTECH has been trained and tested in the smart factory scenario, mainly used for SPS (parts sorting system) intelligent sorting and aging testing. According to reports, the Walker X can be "embedded" into the production process with high repetition and low load through linkage with unmanned handling robots, thereby improving the efficiency and flexibility of the factory. In 2023, UBTECH also specially developed the humanoid robot "Walker" for industrial use.
At present, UBTECH is working with domestic new energy vehicle head enterprises and high-end intelligent equipment solution companies to explore the application of humanoid robots in industrial scenarios such as new energy vehicles, 3C electronics (computers, communications and consumer electronics), and smart logistics. At the main forum of the 2023 World Robot Conference, Zhou Jian once said that manual labor in the era of industrial automation is still indispensable, and in the future, humanoid robots can work in collaboration with traditional automation equipment to solve the flexible unmanned complex scene, and independently complete tasks such as torque tightening, flexible assembly, and material handling.
In the commercial service scenario, UBTECH is also gradually promoting the application of humanoid robots, and its first batch of humanoid robots "Walker X" has landed in the new future city of Saudi Arabia, becoming the first generation of large-scale humanoid robot citizens to provide intelligent services.
In addition, for the application of humanoid robots in family scenarios, Zhou Jian believes that it will be divided into two steps. "The first step is to accompany the application of the function, and the second step is to implement the service function. Now that the robot has the ability to understand and decompose complex tasks, it will enter the second stage once the movement ability has made a breakthrough. ”
Moat
Shortly before UBTECH's listing, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", stating that humanoid robots integrate advanced technologies such as industrial intelligence, high-end manufacturing, and new materials, and are expected to become subversive products after computers, smart phones, and new energy vehicles. The goal is that by 2025, the humanoid robot innovation system will be initially established, the whole machine products will reach the international advanced level, and mass production will be realized, and it will be demonstrated and applied in special, manufacturing, people's livelihood services and other scenarios.
According to the GF** report, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has further increased the guidance for the industrialization of humanoid robots after identifying humanoid robots as one of the key development directions in the "Notice on the Unveiling of Future Industrial Innovation Tasks" in September last year. Driven by policies, humanoid robots are expected to replicate the global competitiveness of new energy and become one of the important industries in China.
In recent years, some major technology companies, new energy vehicle companies and start-up companies have also increased their investment in the humanoid robot track. Last month, Tesla released the humanoid robot Optimus Gen2 (Optimus Prime 2nd generation), which has significantly improved performance, structural design and operational flexibility compared with the previous generation. In August 2023, Zhiyuan Robotics, founded by Huawei's "genius boy" Zhihuijun (real name Peng Zhihui), released the first humanoid robot "Expedition A1", which will be oriented to different manufacturing scenarios such as 3C electronics and automotive equipment, and is expected to be commercialized this year. In addition, Xiaomi also released its first full-size bionic humanoid robot CyberOne in 2022, which is more inclined to service-oriented capabilities, with high emotional intelligence and the ability to perceive human emotions.
At Tesla's 2023 shareholders' meeting, Musk said that humanoid robots are a market with more development potential than electric vehicles, and the ratio of humanoid robots to humans in the future is two to one, which means that the demand for humanoid robots is as high as 20 billion units.
Talking about how to deal with the increasingly fierce market competition, Zhou Jian said that the running entry of technology giants and start-ups will also bring opportunities for UBTECH to bring a large influx of funds and talents. At the same time, in the face of the increasingly severe status quo of the industry, UBTECH also has its own moat
According to the "2023 Humanoid Robot Technology Patent Analysis Report" released by the People's Daily Online Research Institute in November last year, China is currently the country with the most applications for humanoid robot technology patents in the world, with a cumulative number of applications reaching 6,618. Among them, UBTECH's number of effective technology patents for humanoid robots reached 763, ranking first in the world.
Secondly, UBTECH is one of the very few market participants in the global humanoid robot industry, and has taken the lead in realizing the commercialization of humanoid robots. Finally, UBTECH is the world's first humanoid robot company to complete an IPO in the mainstream capital market. Compared with the primary market, the secondary market is more abundant and active, and UBTECH has entered the secondary market earlier than other humanoid robot companies, which means that it can also gain a first-mover advantage in financing. ”
Four "big mountains".
As the products of Zhiyuan Robot, UBTECH and other companies will enter the manufacturing production line, the industry believes that humanoid robots may usher in the first year of commercialization in 2024. However, despite being optimistic about the long-term prospects, Zhou Jian still feels that the humanoid robot industry is still in a relatively early stage of development. On the road to large-scale commercialization of humanoid robots, there are four "mountains" of cost, technology, capital and talent.
Zhou Jian said that from the cost side, in the past, humanoid robots often cost millions of dollars. "Because in order to achieve free movement and complete complex tasks in the non-structural environment of human life, the flexibility of humanoid robots is very demanding, such as servo drives will account for more than half of the cost of the whole machine", he pointed out, although with the joint efforts of relevant robot companies, the cost of core components of humanoid robots has been steadily declining, but there is still a long way to go to make "intelligent robots into thousands of households".
From a technical point of view, humanoid robot is a complex technology that requires long-term investment, and in the early stage of low commercialization, if you want to build a humanoid robot, it means that enterprises need to have a series of core technology research and development capabilities, such as mechanical transmission, motion planning and control, computer vision and perception, human-computer interaction and hand-eye coordination and other core technologies.
On the funding side, the investment in the early research and development of humanoid robots is huge. Taking UBTECH as an example, the company's R&D expenditure in the first six months of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 accounted for a percentage of its total revenue during the period, respectively5% and 859%。
On the talent side, the talent gap related to artificial intelligence and robotics has reached 5 million two years ago, and the number is expected to increase further in the next few years. ”
Zhou Jian also mentioned that referring to the development law of smart phones and smart cars in the past, the sign of the maturity of an intelligent terminal industry is the formation of a perfect ecology of hardware, software, content and services. "Compared with relatively mature hardware, the software ecology of humanoid robots is still in the process of forming, and only when the number of products and users reaches a certain base, can the software ecology have the soil for prosperity and development. ”
But on the other hand, the arrival of the generative AI wave has also brought new opportunities to the humanoid robot industry, Zhou Jian said, embodied intelligence (refers to an intelligent system or machine that can interact with the environment in real time through perception and interaction) more emphasis on the interaction and feedback between the agent and the physical world, the current ChatGPT (artificial intelligence technology-driven natural language processing tool developed by OpenAI) is only information output, but in the future with the help of humanoid robots, Realize the interaction with the physical world, serve the real scene, and solve the real problem. In addition, generative AI can also improve the R&D efficiency of humanoid robots through capabilities such as production, and make the motion planning of humanoid robots more convenient. ”