Chinese humanoids at Korea’s audit; 1.9% of AI firms build hardware

Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Jeong-heon brought two Chinese humanoid robots, made by Unitree and AgiBot, into the National Assembly science and ICT committee’s audit of the Ministry of Science and ICT on October 6, 2026, and used them to argue that Korea’s AI industry has almost no hardware base: of 2,814 Korean AI companies, 53 (1.9%) make hardware such as humanoids. Why it matters: Korea is about to start funding robot foundation models, and Lee’s figures say the domestic hardware those models would run on is thin, while Chinese robots are already the default in Korean public labs.

The robots greeted lawmakers in Korean, shook hands and danced. SBS reported that they were remote-controlled and at times bumped into each other. Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon told the committee that investment so far “appears to have been far too small.”

What did Lee’s figures show?

On the Chinese side, Lee counted about 160 makers of complete humanoids and more than 600 core component suppliers, and said China puts about 30 billion yuan a year into the robot industry, which he converted to about ₩6.4 trillion. Money Today and SBS both reported the figure in those terms.

On the Korean side, the 53 hardware companies out of 2,814 AI firms are the headline. Of those 53, 29 had raised no external investment, and 85.1% said they were struggling to raise money, according to Digital Daily’s account of the figures. Lee also repeated the patent data his office released on September 28: China held 60.8% of humanoid patent filings at the five major patent offices in the first half of 2026 against Korea’s 4.6%, and 66.3% against 8.8% in robot foundation models. We covered that data, and the problems with the application counts published alongside it, in Korea’s humanoid patent share falls to 4.6%.

Where are Chinese robots already in Korean public use?

Two of Lee’s numbers concern the state’s own purchases. Science museums, including the Gwangju National Science Museum, have 36 Chinese robots on site and no Korean-made ones. Government research institutes — the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) among them — have bought 13 Chinese humanoids for research.

The research-institute figure is the more consequential one. A lab that buys a Unitree or AgiBot platform because it is available and inexpensive is a rational buyer. The consequence is structural: Korean publicly funded research on humanoid control and data collection is being built on Chinese hardware, at a time when the United States has barred new authorisations for foreign-made humanoids. Korea has no comparable restriction.

How much has Korea spent on robot foundation models?

Lee said the robot foundation model R&D budget was zero through 2024, and ₩4 billion in each of 2025 and 2026. Bae acknowledged the shortfall. “Investment so far appears to have been far too small,” he said, adding that for the technology to spread, investment in data and in robot hardware has to be made in earnest. He said the government had designated physical AI as a future growth industry and was preparing a humanoid and robot ecosystem for real industrial use.

The ministry has already said it will start robot foundation model and world model development in 2027 with two parallel consortia, as we reported in Korea’s robot foundation model R&D starts in 2027; the budget for that programme had not been confirmed as of that report. Lee’s numbers set the baseline it will be measured against: ₩8 billion over two years, against a Chinese industry he put at 160 complete-robot makers.