New IDC data: humanoid robot shipments up 432% year over year, jobs for robots, and much more ...
Today in Humanoid Daily ... Singapore puts humanoids on the police beat, Korea wants 200,000 robots by 2030, the U.S. Army and Ukraine push robots toward military use, robots are moving into hospitals and homes, and today's number of the day is 25,000. As in ... shipped robots, up 432% year over year.
Humanoids are heading to work
So much going on in humanoid robots right now ...
Singapore is putting $100 million behind humanoid robots for public safety, while South Korea wants 200,000 robots deployed by 2030. The U.S. Army and Ukraine are also pushing robots toward military use, with a focus on dangerous and physically demanding jobs.
Meanwhile, NEURA Robotics istargeting much more everyday work in hospitals, and Flourish launches a cheap robot for homes. And finally ... IDC says nearly 25,000 humanoids shipped globally in the first half of 2026.
That's up 432% year over year, and we have a list of the top 10 vendors so far ...
Singapore puts $100 million behind public-safety humanoids
Singapore just opened the Home Team Humanoid Robotics Centre, H2RC, with $100 million committed and a hard target: get the first humanoid working alongside actual public safety officers by 2028.
And these are not ceremonial robots.
Singapore is targeting post-blast investigations, hazardous-material incidents, prison-cell searches and other jobs where people currently face significant risk.
The 29,000-square-foot facility runs on HTX's sovereign AI platform, currently powered by NVIDIA GB300 chips, and partners include ST Engineering, FieldAI, General Robotics and Mistral AI.
Second Minister Edwin Tong summed up the strategy well: robots take on routine, physically demanding or dangerous work, while officers focus on jobs requiring judgment, empathy and leadership.
Singapore isn't buying or building a robot ... it's building the compute, training infrastructure, use cases and operational environment required to actually put humanoids to work. And it wants them on the job within two years.
Korea wants 200,000 robots deployed by 2030
South Korea is making an even bigger bet.
The government says it wants 200,000 robots deployed across the public and private sectors by 2030, including 15,000 government-procured robots every year starting in 2027. The first targets include fire and rescue, agriculture, logistics and other jobs where labour shortages, safety or repetitive work make automation attractive.
Small and medium-sized companies adopting robots can get half their costs subsidized, while Korea is also building specialized robot industrial clusters and a large-scale R&D and production hub.
The key here is government as first customer. China has built enormous infrastructure around humanoid development, manufacturing and training that works because of government support, funding, and legislation.
Korea's taking a page out of China's book here and is attacking the demand side too: buy the robots, put them into real jobs and create a domestic market at scale.
If the technology works, that could accelerate commercialization very quickly.
The military humanoid race is getting real
Meanwhile, humanoids and humanoid-adjacent robots are moving closer to military deployment.
The U.S. Army recently selected five winners in its xTechHumanoid competition after testing commercial platforms for military applications. The goal is straightforward: use robots for dangerous or physically demanding work so soldiers don't have to.
And Ukraine is taking a similar idea in a much more battlefield-driven direction.
Its new "Army of Robots" initiative is exploring machines that could reload weapons, replace batteries in battlefield sensors, move supplies or launch drones.
There's also a cost target ... Instead of buying sophisticated foreign humanoids for $40,000 to $70,000, Ukraine wants some systems closer to $10,000 to $20,000. This parallels what Ukraine has done with drones, of course: cheaper, faster, more expendable munitions.
This also points to a broader lesson for humanoids: you may not need the perfect human-shaped robot. You may just need enough mobility, manipulation and autonomy to do one dangerous job well.
Robots move into hospitals and homes
Two other launches this week show robots moving much closer to everyday life:
- NEURA Robotics is moving into healthcare
- Flourish Robotics is offering cheap home humanoids
NEURA Robotics has created a dedicated healthcare division focused initially on autonomous hospital-bed transport. Moving beds sounds mundane, but hospitals spend huge amounts of staff time doing exactly that kind of physical logistics work. NEURA says automating around 20 bed transports a day could save more than 1,300 staff hours a year.
And then there's Flourish 1.
It's a $3,555 wheeled home robot designed to learn household jobs from demonstrations on your phone. The company says you can teach it tasks in about 30 minutes: picking things up, loading a dishwasher, wiping tables, watering plants, fetching objects or even cleaning the cat litter.
Only 50 units are being offered initially, so this is very early. But the price matters. At $3,555, we're getting much closer to appliance pricing than experimental-robot pricing.
And between hospital logistics and household chores, we're seeing the same pattern: the earliest useful (and employed!) robots may win by doing boring work people would rather not do.
Number of the day: 25,000
IDC estimates almost 25,000 humanoid robots shipped globally in the first half of 2026. That's up 432% year over year.
AGIBOT led all vendors with more than 8,600 units and roughly 35% market share. Here's the top 10 vendors, based on a press release Agibot shared with me:
- AGIBOT — ~8,600
- Unitree — ~5,000
- Booster Robotics — ~1,000
- UBTech — ~900
- Leju Robot — ~460
- Galbot — ~400
- Astribot — ~340
- Fourier Intelligence — ~320
- Galaxea AI — ~260
- Figure AI — ~30–50
About 69% of those humanoids went into research and education, performances and displays, or government data centers ... not industrial production.
So the manufacturing ramp is real, but the deployment story is still catching up. That's probably the biggest thing to watch in humanoids right now: not who can build the most robots, but who can put the most robots to economically useful work.
Sources
- Singapore — Home Team Humanoid Robotics Centre / Channel NewsAsia: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/watch/first-humanoid-robot-targeted-work-alongside-home-team-officers-2028-6421961
- Korea — Government plan to supply 200,000 robots by 2030: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2026/09/30/QAFVKZ3W25GWZLVSFY2SMCL6OA/
- U.S. Army humanoids: https://www.humanoidmegahub.com/news/us-army-humanoid-robots
- Ukraine “Army of Robots”: https://mezha.net/eng/news/284f6ca0_ukraine_launches_army_of/
- NEURA Robotics healthcare division: https://www.humanoidmegahub.com/news/neura-robotics-healthcare-division
- Flourish 1 home robot: https://www.humanoidmegahub.com/news/flourish-1-home-robot
- IDC humanoid shipments / AGIBOT lead: https://www.idc.com/resource-center/blog/半年出货-2-5-万台，同比增长432-1：全球人形机器人商业/
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I tell stories with data and build startups. I've raised angel and VC funds, led software companies and startups, and chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. Currently I write for Forbes, host several podcasts, and am starting up HumanoidMegaHub. I was TUNE's mobile economist and Singular's VP of Insights, built the research team at VentureBeat, and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In past lives I built websites, e-learning platforms, and mobile apps, and, a long time ago, was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.”