Samsung accelerates its humanoid robot program, and China looks at humanoids for war

Samsung is racing toward its first humanoid

One of the world’s biggest electronics companies is about to formally enter the humanoid race. Samsung Electronics is accelerating development of its first general-purpose humanoid robot, with a prototype reportedly targeted for CES 2027 in Las Vegas.

According to Seoul Economic Daily, the project sits inside Samsung’s Robotics, or RX, Business Team and reports directly to the head of its Device eXperience division.

And there’s an interesting organizational choice here: Samsung CTO Yoon Jang-hyun is overseeing both the hardware and AI software teams, essentially bringing the robot’s brain and body under one leader from the beginning.

Samsung has not officially confirmed that it will unveil the robot at CES, so that timing remains a report rather than an announcement.

But the bigger picture is clear.

Samsung already controls important pieces of the stack: semiconductors, AI, cameras, displays, batteries, consumer electronics and manufacturing. It also owns a controlling stake in Rainbow Robotics, which is pursuing industrial robotics.

That makes this more than just any another humanoid startup. This is a really, really big deal, and Samsung entering the field is yet another signal that humanoids are becoming a strategic platform for the world’s largest technology and manufacturing companies.

China is thinking seriously about robot soldiers

And that same technology is attracting attention well outside commercial markets.

In a concerning story, a Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military documents found growing interest from institutions connected to the People’s Liberation Army in humanoids for reconnaissance, patrol, hazardous missions and potentially combat.

There’s an important caveat: Reuters found no evidence that armed humanoids are currently deployed with operational PLA units. That's no shock: they're not ready yet. But procurement notices, research papers and commentary from PLA-linked institutions show the military is actively studying the technology.

That highlights an increasingly important reality in robotics: technology developed for factories, warehouses and consumer applications can be highly dual-use.

And as commercial humanoids improve, military organizations around the world are going to be watching.

And unless we want real-life Terminators, we need to do something about it internationally. 

Agility’s finances show how early this business still is

Meanwhile, we’ve gotten one of the clearest financial snapshots yet of a major American humanoid company. 

Agility Robotics is preparing to go public through its proposed SPAC combination with Churchill Capital Corp XI, and its SEC filing shows just $1.8 million in net sales for 2025, alongside roughly $140 million in operating losses.

That’s against a proposed transaction valuation of about $2.5 billion.

Agility does have real deployments. Digit robots are operating at nine customer locations, and the company says they’ve accumulated more than 65,000 hours of operation.

But the numbers are a useful reality check for the entire humanoid sector.

The valuations, factories and production ambitions are already enormous. The revenues, for now, are not.

That actually is good news for European humanoid robot makers, like Agile Robots, who have existing broader businesses in industrial robots and automation.

Humanoids are spreading into real markets

And this week gave us plenty of evidence that companies are trying exactly that.

• In Serbia, a new factory in Šabac backed by Chinese automotive supplier Minth and AgiBot has shipped its first humanoid robots, with planned capacity of 3,000 units annually for the European market.
  
• Galbot has opened pre-orders for its ET1 bipedal humanoid, targeting entertainment, performance, hospitality and public interaction rather than traditional factory work.
  
• Hong Kong now has humanoid shopkeepers interacting with convenience-store customers in Mandarin, Cantonese and English.
  
• South Korea has opened the 16,500-square-meter Galaxy Robot Park, where robots dance, perform and interact with visitors.
  
• And at IFA in Berlin, Chinese-made robots were everywhere—dancing, boxing, greeting people and demonstrating industrial tasks.
  

Perhaps the biggest financial vote of confidence comes from XPeng. Its humanoid robotics project has reportedly raised more than $900 million, valuing the business at more than $6 billion.

Put all of this together, and humanoids are starting to split into actual market categories.

• Factory worker. 
• Retail assistant. 
• Performer. 
• Greeter. 
• Entertainment attraction.
  

The dream is still one general-purpose machine that can do almost anything. But commercialization may happen first through robots that do a few specific things well.

A robot that can draw your blood

And one of the most interesting robots this week isn’t humanoid at all.

Dutch company Vitestro has built Aletta, an autonomous system that finds a vein and draws blood without a human phlebotomist doing the needle work. It combines near-infrared imaging and ultrasound to locate and assess veins, and the FDA authorized the system in August for adults in certain non-hospital settings.

In a Dutch clinical trial involving more than 1,600 people, Aletta successfully drew blood on the first attempt in 94.5 percent of cases. (That might be better than human nurses!)

There are still questions around broader clinical performance, including results across different patient populations, but Aletta illustrates the same shift we’re seeing across robotics.

The most commercially valuable robots may not be the ones that can theoretically do everything ... they may be the ones that solve one expensive, repetitive problem extremely well.

Number of the day: 26 million humanoids

Finally, our number of the day is 26 million.

That’s how many humanoid robots research firm Berg Insight forecasts could ship every year by 2040. For context, it estimates shipments of around 16,000 units this year (low compared to other estimates).

Getting from 16,000 to 26 million would mean extraordinary growth sustained for well over a decade. Berg Insight also forecasts the market growing from roughly $890 million this year to $554 billion by 2040.

Those are forecasts, not guarantees, and any prediction looking 14 years into the future deserves plenty of skepticism.

But look at the direction of travel in today’s stories.

Samsung is reportedly building a humanoid. XPeng is raising hundreds of millions of dollars. New factories are shipping robots. Agility is heading toward public markets. Humanoids are showing up in stores, entertainment venues and military research.

Whether the industry ultimately ships exactly 26 million robots a year is almost beside the point. The big shift is that humanoids are moving from an experimental technology category toward an industry that some of the world’s largest companies increasingly believe they need to be part of.

Sources

1. Samsung humanoid: Seoul Economic Daily — https://en.sedaily.com/finance/2026/09/07/samsung-to-unveil-first-humanoid-robot-at-ces-2027
2. China military humanoids: BigGo Finance / Reuters reporting — https://finance.biggo.com/news/8d967e38-d6a4-4b84-bcae-76819dda374a
3. Agility Robotics financials: The Robot Report; cross-checked against Agility/Churchill SEC filings — https://www.therobotreport.com/agility-robotics-reports-18m-revenue-ahead-of-humanoid-spac/
4. Commercialization roundup: Šabac factory, Galbot ET1, Al Jazeera Hong Kong robot shopkeeper, BBC Galaxy Robot Park, Korea JoongAng Daily IFA coverage, and Manila Times on XPeng funding.
5. Vitestro Aletta: IEEE Spectrum — https://spectrum.ieee.org/blood-draw-robot-vitestro-aletta
6. Berg Insight forecast: I-Connect007 — https://iconnect007.com/article/151480/humanoid-robot-shipments-to-reach-26m-units-annually-by-2040/151477/ein