US vs China

Frontier stack vs deployment / supply-chain machine

Industrial base calibration

China industrial robot installations🟢 IFR

295,000installations, 2024

54% of global demand; operational stock around 2.027m robots.

North America robot orders🟢 A3

31,311orders, 2024

A3 reported US$1.963bn order value; industrial automation benchmark, not humanoid-specific.

Leaderdrive harmonic reducer sales🟢 filing

425,158units, 2025

+72.48% YoY; supplier filing signal, not named humanoid OEM proof.

US frontier stackTesla / Figure

Frontier AI, vertical OEM design, capital intensity, factory automation and named deployment KPI.

China deployment machineSupply chain + scenes

Industrial base, fast product iteration, component suppliers, government / enterprise scene funnels.

Stage differenceS3/S4

US leads visible frontier-humanoid proof; China leads component breadth and deployment experimentation.

Shared missing proofS5

Repeat paid deployment, robot revenue, customer ROI, uptime, intervention rate and gross margin.

Vertical stack

Needs scale supply, reducers/actuators, manufacturing yield and actual output.

Deployment proof

BMW KPI validates task execution; needs repeat economics and supply-chain scale-up.

Component density

Reducers, motors, drives, batteries, sensors and machining can shape humanoid cost curves.

Cost-access curve

Lower ASP and fast iteration may expand developer / pilot adoption before S5 economics.