Chinese Unitree takes the lead in the marketplace of quadruped robots

chiny24.com 1 month ago

According to the latest data from October 2025, Chinese maker Unitree Robotics controls as much as 70% of the global marketplace for quadropods in terms of the number of units sold. The company achieved yearly revenues exceeding 1 billion yuan (about $140 million) – mainly thanks to the sale of its Go2, B1, B2 models and the latest A2, codenamed "Stellar Hunter".

The success of Hangzhou is not just a substance of price. Unitree not only offers equipment up to 10 times cheaper than Western competitors, but besides produces it on a massive scale – up to 200 Go2 units per day during the highest season. Compared to Boston Dynamics, whose yearly gross is estimated at $100–200 million and with ANYbotics – below 27 million – the Chinese giant seems to have no equal.

Why the quadrupeds?

Although drones and wheelworks are cheaper or faster, quadrupeds offer something they cannot do: flexibility in a complex environment. They can cross the stairs, avoid obstacles, travel in uneven terrain, and even jump to 30 centimeters. In chemical plants, plants or constructions – where the space is tight and the level full of obstacles – it is the quadrupeds that become a natural choice.

Drones, despite higher speed, are limited by regulations – they cannot fly over people in the rooms, and at the walls they lose stableness due to the alleged "prop wash" – turbulence around rotors. The wheelwork in turn has besides much turning radius (even 2.5 metres) and low clearance, preventing them from operating in industrial realities.

Unitree vs. Boston Dynamics – 2 strategies, 2 worlds

Boston Dynamics, creator of the place robot, has been building an integrated, closed platform for years. place offers ready autonomy, unchangeable APIs and method support – but costs tens of thousands of dollars, and in the model RaaS (Robot-as-a-Service) the monthly fee reaches $10,000. It's a solution for large corporations that can afford to invest in advanced but costly technology.

Unitree chose a completely different path. His robots – although initially offering little ready autonomy – are open to programmers and researchers. With full engine access and low cost (Go2 costs a fraction of place price), they became a standard in laboratories around the world. It was on the Unitree platform that groundbreaking teaching (Reinforcement Learning) specified as "Rapid Motor Adaptation" from 2020 was created.

This choice of strategy has far-reaching consequences. The external ecosystem – AI companies, integrators, software developers – is developing mainly around Unitree, which gradually evens its weaker sides in terms of the final autonomy.

New Value Layer: AI and Integration

The quadruped marketplace is no longer a hardware game. Companies specified as FieldAI and Skill AI, which supply “brains” for robots, are playing an increasingly crucial function – artificial intelligence models that enable independent movement, decision making and specialised tasks. FieldAI has already invested over $400 million and Skild AI is valued at $4.5 billion – even though there are only a fewer years.

System integrators specified as Chironix, IntuitiveRobots or Chinese SUPCON adapt quadrupeds to circumstantial applications: they mount acoustic sensors to detect gas leaks, thermal cameras to monitor transformers or systems to analyse device vibration. As a result, the value passes from the maker of equipment to the supplier of a comprehensive solution.

Security – the question of trust, not technology

However, things don't work out the way Unitree intended. In 2024, investigator Andreas Makris discovered backdoor in Chinese robot software, which sparked a wave of data safety concerns. any U.S. oil and gas companies have banned their integrators from utilizing Unitree, and the deficiency of on-premise solutions may exclude it from the US energy sector due to the NERC regulations.

However, in many another sectors – construction, protection of buildings, logistics – Unitree continues to gain fresh markets. This suggests that safety becomes a substance of section alternatively than a global barrier.

The Future: From investigation to Industry

Over the next 5 years, the four-legged will enter fresh areas:

Data centres – where the downtime costs millions of dollars a day, and robots will monitor substations and cooling systems.
Delivery of the “last mile” – on university campuses or in intelligent cities, where the cost of transportation by the robot is only $2.50 compared to $9 for the courier.
Object protection – replacing guards whose yearly cost is $250–450 thousand.

The key question remains: Will there be a “hyperskaler” – a giant like Amazon or Google – that will force the marketplace to consolidate? erstwhile this happens, it will most likely choice a service model (like AWS), alternatively than hardware (like Tesla Optimus). By then, Unitree would proceed to dominate, and the West – tried to catch up with the Chinese train, building local supply chains and AI ecosystems.

One thing is certain: the future of mobile robotics does not walk on 2 legs – it moves on four.

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