China Leads Global Humanoid Robot Patent Race with Fivefold Advantage

China has pulled far ahead in the race to build humanoid robots, issuing five times as many related patents as the United States over the past five years, according to Morgan Stanley's latest Robot Almanac.

In the report, China recorded 7,705 humanoid patents compared to 1,561 in the US. Japan ranked next with 1,102 patents, followed by the World Intellectual Property Organization with 1,100. The analysis highlighted the cost advantage that China brings to the humanoid robot supply chain, estimating that developing a supply chain for Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 would cost almost three times as much without China's participation.

In a hypothetical non-China supply chain, the cost of actuators, which are the mechanisms that move joints, would rise from about 22 thousand dollars to 58 thousand dollars. Chip and software costs would climb from roughly 3 thousand dollars to 7 thousand dollars.

Overall, the bill of materials for the Optimus Gen 2 would surge from around 46 thousand dollars to 131 thousand dollars, with similar increases across key hardware components including dexterous hands, feet, vision systems, and batteries.

The report was produced by the Morgan Stanley Global Embodied AI Team and lists 32 authors.