Nvidia dives into humanoid robots with China’s Unitree ahead of IPO
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks at the Nvidia GTC conference on the sidelines of Computex 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan, Monday, June 1, 2026.
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Nvidia The company announced Monday that it has chosen Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree for its first robotic system, which the U.S. chipmaker is selling to researchers from Stanford to ETH Zurich.
The system combines Unitree’s nearly 6-foot-tall H2 humanoid robot with Nvidia’s Jetson Thor hardware, which includes the company’s advanced Blackwell GPU for on-device AI capabilities.
Nvidia’s humanoid-focused AI models and simulation systems, known as Isaac GR00T, are part of its new robotics testing suite, according to a press release. The robot also uses mechanical hands produced by Singapore-based companies. sharpa. PitchBook lists Qiming Venture Partners among the startup’s backers.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicted that “physical AI” could become a market worth tens of trillions of dollars. He told investors last month that he expects rapid growth in the robotics segment over the next five years.
“Today, we’re announcing Nvidia Isaac Root, a fully integrated reference humanoid robot with 31 degrees of freedom on the robot, weighing 1.80 kg, just like me, with 25 degrees of freedom on each side made by Sharpa, all fully integrated,” Huang said in his keynote speech in Taipei on Monday. he said.
Visitors examine the Unitree H2 humanoid vehicle, which was unveiled to the public for the first time at the robot expo in Hangzhou in east China’s Zhejiang province on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.
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“This platform runs the new Thor and our entire software stack, our data rendering stack, our data simulation stack, our runtime—all integrated into a robot designed for everyone to use,” he added.
“We did this for higher education and university researchers, because it’s incredibly difficult for them to do that.”
The new system also expands Nvidia’s presence in robotics software development and strengthens the chipmaker’s dominance in AI computing through the widely used CUDA software platform.
Unitree’s global market
The news comes as Unittree calls Collected 4.2 billion yuan ($620 million) via listing on Shanghai’s STAR board. The change is planned to be made Check out the IPO filing on Monday.
Unitree announced more than 40% of its revenue It already comes from markets outside China.
Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia’s vice president of physical AI simulation, said the H2 Plus, an upgraded version of Unitree’s H2 humanoid robot, will be available in October and “anyone can buy it.”
It’s “a move that takes frontier humanoid research out of the hands of just the world’s largest tech companies and AI unicorns and makes it available to every lab,” he said.
At least four research institutions are currently planning to use the H2 Plus humanoid robot, the press release said.
These include Seattle-based Ai2, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the Stanford Robotics Center, and UC San Diego’s Advanced Robotics and Control Laboratory. No research institutions based in China were listed.
Humanoid robots continue to be a nascent market. While companies like Unitree and California-based 1X Technologies have developed general-purpose robots, deployments of AI-powered humanoid robots have been largely limited to warehouses; security and privacy concerns still hinder broader use in homes.
