TL;DR
A humanoid robot built to keep adults company at home is now on show in South Korea, priced at about $30,000. UBTech's U1 Pro runs on Alibaba's Qwen AI model, translates between English and Korean, and is expected to hold conversations in Korean starting next month. The company reports 13,361 pre-orders for the series before its June launch, a company number rather than shipments. China already builds almost all of the world's humanoids, and at Unitree over 70% of humanoid revenue has come from research and education buyers; this one is aimed at a living room, and it is now courting buyers outside China. For our odds on when companion robots like this actually land in homes, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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