<\/p>\n
BEIJING, Feb 8 (Reuters) – In China, humanoid robots are serving as Lunar New Year entertainment, with their manufacturers pitching their song-and-dance skills to the general public as well as potential customers, \u200binvestors and government officials.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Shanghai-based robotics start-up Agibot live-streamed an almost hour-long variety show featuring \u200cits robots dancing, performing acrobatics and magic, lip-syncing ballads and performing in comedy sketches. Other Agibot humanoid robots waved from an audience \u200csection.<\/p>\n
An estimated 1.4 million people watched on the Chinese streaming platform Douyin. Agibot, which called the promotional stunt “the world’s first robot-powered gala,” did not have an immediate estimate for total viewership.<\/p>\n
The show ran a week ahead of China’s annual Spring Festival gala to be aired by state television, an event that has become an important – if unlikely – \u2060venue for Chinese robot makers to \u200cshow off their success.<\/p>\n
A squad of 16 full-size humanoids from Unitree joined human dancers in performing at China Central Television’s 2025 gala, drawing stunned accolades from millions of viewers.<\/p>\n
Less \u200dthan three weeks later, Unitree’s founder was invited to a high-profile symposium chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Hangzhou-based robotics firm has since been preparing for a potential initial public offering.<\/p>\n
This year’s CCTV gala will include participation by four humanoid \u200brobot startups, Unitree, Galbot, Noetix and MagicLab, the companies and broadcaster have said.<\/p>\n
Agibot’s gala employed over 200 \u200crobots. It was streamed on social media platforms RedNote, Sina Weibo, TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin. Chinese-language television networks HTTV and iCiTi TV also broadcast the performance.<\/p>\n
“When robots begin to understand Lunar New Year and begin to have a sense of humour, the human-computer interaction may come faster than we think,” Ma Hongyun, a photographer and writer with 4.8 million followers on Weibo, said in a post.<\/p>\n
Agibot, which says its humanoid robots \u2060are designed for a range of applications, including in education, \u200bentertainment and factories, plans to launch an initial public offering in \u200bHong Kong, Reuters has reported.<\/p>\n
State-run Securities Times said Agibot had opted out of the CCTV gala in order to focus spending on research and development. The company did not respond \u200dto a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The \u2060company demonstrated two of its robots to Xi during a visit in April last year.<\/p>\n
U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, who has pivoted automaker Tesla<\/a> toward a focus on artificial intelligence<\/a> and the Optimus humanoid \u2060robot, has said the only competitive threat he faces in robotics is from Chinese firms.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BEIJING, Feb 8 (Reuters) – In China, humanoid robots are serving as Lunar New Year entertainment, with their manufacturers pitching their song-and-dance skills to the general public as well as potential customers, \u200binvestors and government officials. On Sunday, Shanghai-based robotics start-up Agibot live-streamed an almost hour-long variety show featuring \u200cits robots dancing, performing acrobatics and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2273629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[440093,21741,440092,440095,430552,423000,440094],"class_list":["post-2273628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-china-central-television","tag-entertainment","tag-humanoid-robots","tag-initial-public-offering","tag-lunar-new-year","tag-robots","tag-spring-festival-gala"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Chinese-robot-makers-ready-for-Lunar-New-Year-entertainment-spotlight.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2273628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273630,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273628\/revisions\/2273630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2273629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2273628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2273628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2273628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}