- Unitree founder predicts humanoid robots will break Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint world record by mid-year.
- While hardware speed continues to make breakthroughs, the "ChatGPT moment" for embodied AI software remains to be seen.
Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree, expects rapid progress in the athletic capabilities of humanoid robots, with a major new breakthrough in embodied AI coming within two to three years.
Humanoid robots will achieve the ability to run faster than Usain Bolt this year, with robots globally — and particularly in China — making breakthroughs by mid-year, Wang said in a speech at the 2026 Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum, which opened Monday in Yabuli, Heilongjiang province.
By then, the 100-meter sprint speed of humanoid robots is expected to drop below 10 seconds, surpassing the 9.58-second world record set by the retired Jamaican sprinter, Wang said.
The Chinese robotics industry has already made significant strides in the speed race. In February, local startup MirrorMe unveiled a humanoid robot named Bolt, inspired by the athlete.
In real-world tests, the robot's peak running speed reached 10 meters per second, approaching Bolt's top instantaneous speed of 10.44 meters per second.
Unitree's own robot set a speed record of 3.3 meters per second in August 2025. Now, the industry's overall motion perception and athletic capabilities are rapidly approaching and even surpassing those of humans.
While hardware speed continues to see constant breakthroughs, the "ChatGPT moment" for embodied AI software still requires more time, Wang noted.
The industry currently faces three core challenges: insufficient generalization capabilities of AI models, a scarcity of high-quality training data, and the need to improve the scale effect of reinforcement learning, he said.
Despite these technical difficulties, Wang expects this technological breakthrough may take two to three years, though the overall process will still be very rapid.
Founded in 2016, Unitree is one of China's largest humanoid robot manufacturers.
Wang predicted last month that global humanoid robot shipments will reach tens of thousands of units in 2026, with Unitree targeting shipments of 10,000 to 20,000 units. This figure represents a substantial increase from Unitree's 5,500 units shipped in 2025.
