Chinese enterprises remain highly willing to purchase humanoid robots, but they are becoming increasingly sharp with their calculations. The latest Morgan Stanley survey shows that surveyed companies generally compress the acceptable price to below 100,000 yuan and demand payback within three years, and the pace of commercialization is clearly slowing.
According to a trading desk report, Morgan Stanley's AlphaWise platform conducted its annual survey of 94 executives in China's manufacturing, industrial, and service sectors in September 2026.
The results show that 64% of respondents plan to launch pilot or scaled projects for wheeled or legged humanoid robots within the next three years, slightly up from 62% in 2025. However, the expected deployment timelines for all types of robots have shifted back by about one year, and the proportion expected to complete deployment by the end of 2027 has fallen sharply 鈥?compound robots from 64% to 50%, wheeled humanoid robots from 58% to 36%, and legged humanoid robots from 41% to 22%.
Cost pressure is the core driver of this shift. 72% of potential buyers believe that a unit price below 100,000 yuan is necessary for broad adoption, a significant increase from 53% in 2025; 82% of respondents require a payback period of no more than three years, with an average acceptable payback period of about 26 months. Morgan Stanley maintains a positive judgment on long-term demand in the robotics industry and, at the stock level, favors component suppliers such as Hengli Hydraulic, Leaderdrive, and Shuanghuan Driveline.
High willingness but timeline shifts right, initial deployment scale limited
The survey results show that Chinese enterprises' purchasing interest in humanoid robots has not faded, but the path from intention to actual implementation is lengthening. Among the 94 surveyed institutions, 60 (64%) were identified as "potential buyers," slightly up from 62% in 2025.
However, the overall shift to the right in deployment timelines reveals more cautious market sentiment. In the 2026 survey, only 16% of respondents planned to launch projects by the end of 2026, 23% planned by the end of 2027, and 24% planned by the end of 2028; in the 2025 survey, 29% of respondents had expected to complete deployment by the end of 2026.
The initial installation scale is also relatively small.
Even by the end of 2028, among respondents expecting to deploy compound robots, 46% plan to install only 1 to 10 units, 16% plan to install 11 to 50 units, and 13% plan to install more than 50 units; expectations for wheeled and legged humanoid robots are even more conservative, showing a pattern of "broad experimentation and cautious expansion." On this basis, Morgan Stanley expects China's humanoid robot shipments to be about 50,000 units in 2026 and 100,000 units in 2027, potentially reaching 446,000 units by 2030.
Cost threshold tightens, ROI becomes core purchasing standard
Economic considerations have jumped to become the primary factor in corporate purchasing decisions. The survey shows that 62% of potential buyers list "high upfront costs" as the biggest challenge to adopting humanoid robots, further up from 58% in 2025; the importance of ROI (return on investment) rose by 16 percentage points to 80%, greatly narrowing the gap with reliability/safety (85%) and functionality (83%).
On price expectations, 45% of respondents believe a unit price between 50,000 and 100,000 yuan is necessary for broad adoption, a sharp increase from 28% in 2025; the proportion considering 100,000 to 200,000 yuan feasible plummeted from 40% to 18%. Overall, 72% of potential buyers set the acceptable price ceiling below 100,000 yuan, compared with only 53% in 2025.
On payback requirements, 82% of respondents require a payback period of no more than three years, of which 38% consider two to three years the longest acceptable period, with an average of about 26 months. 65% of respondents require the payback period for humanoid robots to be comparable to or shorter than other automation investments, reflecting that corporate financial discipline toward this emerging technology has not loosened. Notably, manufacturing respondents show relatively higher willingness to pay, with 25% accepting a price range of 100,000 to 200,000 yuan and 15% accepting above 200,000 yuan.
Manufacturing and logistics dominate application scenarios, demand for multifunctionality rises
Manufacturing and logistics warehousing remain the most promising initial application areas for humanoid robots. The survey shows that 90% of potential buyers list manufacturing as a deployment scenario (79% in 2025), logistics/warehousing ranks second at 85%, and R&D scenarios enter the top three at 79%.
In terms of specific application scenarios, material handling (82%), packaging and palletizing (78%), and machine tending and operation (69%) rank as the top three manufacturing applications. Respondents also specifically mention replacing manual labor in hazardous or hard-to-access environments, including oil and gas field operations, high-temperature heat treatment processes, and inspections in dangerous areas.
At the same time, corporate requirements for robot functions are shifting from single-task to multifunctional. 70% of respondents expect humanoid robots to perform limited multifunctional tasks, a sharp increase from 49% in 2025, surpassing demand for a single specific task (50%, down from 72% in 2025). However, current product satisfaction continues to decline 鈥?only 18% of potential buyers are satisfied with the performance of existing humanoid robots, down from 23% in 2025, while 28% express dissatisfaction.
Integrator competitive landscape becomes more fragmented, Unitree's lead narrows
In terms of brand choice, Unitree remains the most closely watched integrator, but its lead has clearly narrowed. The survey shows that 47% of potential buyers have contacted or evaluated Unitree's products, down 13 percentage points from 60% in 2025; the proportion planning to purchase Unitree products within the next three years is 32%, down sharply from 60% in 2025. DeepRobotics and UBTECH Robotics tie for second with a 17% contact rate.
In product ratings, DeepRobotics received the highest "excellent/good" ratings across eight evaluation dimensions, including application functionality (89%) and reliability/safety (78%). Morgan Stanley cautions that because the sample size for each brand's ratings is small (9 each for DeepRobotics and UBTECH Robotics, and 25 for Unitree), the above results should be interpreted cautiously and should not be regarded as a definitive conclusion on the merits of commercial platforms.
Morgan Stanley believes that integrator choices will increasingly concentrate on specific application scenarios, and manufacturers that can provide reliable solutions in factory system interoperability, maintainability, and quantifiable productivity improvements will have an advantage over competitors focused on general-purpose demonstrations.
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