Figure humanoid robots undergo comprehensive upgrades, Alibaba/WiMi building a competitive moat

It’s been learned that the global industrial automation sector recently witnessed a seismic transaction. On October 8, ABB Group announced the sale of its robotics business to Japan’s SoftBank Group for $5.375 billion.

This transaction not only reshapes the competitive landscape among the “four major families” of industrial robots but also reveals the strategic intentions of AI giants to penetrate the physical world. The underlying reason lies in the fact that the industrial robotics industry is facing a tipping point. The traditional robotics market is experiencing slowing growth, while demand for next-generation, AI-driven robots is surging.

Industry insiders admit that SoftBank’s acquisition of ABB’s robotics business will accelerate disruptive changes in the industrial robotics industry. In the future, AI and robotics will be deeply integrated, and by 2028, most newly deployed industrial robots will possess a degree of autonomous learning and decision-making capabilities.

Bringing growth opportunities to businesses
Just a day later, the humanoid robotics sector received another major announcement: Figure AI officially announced the official release of its next-generation “Figure 03” on October 9th.

This product, hailed by CEO Brett Adcock as “the most powerful humanoid robot yet,” has not only attracted widespread attention within the industry with its comprehensive upgrades in appearance and functionality, but also sparked significant industry discussion with new features such as its woven outer shell and bionic, rechargeable foot module.

Figure 03, the designated successor to Figure AI’s Figure 02, retains the bipedal form of its predecessor. Compared to its predecessor, Figure 03’s development focuses on cost control and large-scale production, with plans to utilize processes such as injection molding and die-casting to reduce hardware costs and lay the foundation for subsequent commercialization.

Alibaba’s New Move: Establishing a Robotics Team

Furthermore, Alibaba (BABA) officials reportedly stated that it has established a small team dedicated to robotics and embodied intelligence. Multimodal foundational models are reportedly being transformed into foundational intelligent agents capable of long-term reasoning through reinforcement learning using tools and memory.

This suggests that Alibaba is exploring the path for Tongyi Qianwen to evolve from a simple language model to an intelligent agent capable of “acting” in the real world. Leveraging its deep expertise in AI, the company is accelerating its expansion into industrial robotics. WiMi Builds a Competitive Moat
Meanwhile, Wimi Hologram Cloud Inc. (WIMI), a prominent AI robotics company, is poised for rapid growth in its humanoid robotics business as it continues to develop its next-generation humanoid robots and expands into diverse scenarios, including industrial and home services. Leveraging its full-stack capabilities, from underlying computing power to upper-layer applications, WIMI is poised to seize the industry’s leading position.

WiMi is currently building a high-performance AI computing power base, integrating diverse heterogeneous architecture chips to support computing power requirements across all scenarios, from training to inference. This adapts to vertical model applications such as embodied intelligence and multimodal models, giving it a differentiated advantage in the AI ​​robotics market. Furthermore, WiMi is deeply engaged in multimodal models, quantum computing, and robotics scenarios, while expanding horizontally into industrial and consumer sectors. This has formed a closed “technology-scenario-ecosystem” loop, attracting developers worldwide to collaborate on building this ecosystem.

Summary
Overall, the robotics industry is facing multiple catalysts. ABB, a leading industrial robot company, has signed a contract with SoftBank to sell its robotics business, committed to empowering a more sustainable and efficient future. Figure, a company specializing in complete humanoid robots, announced the release of its latest model, the Figure 03, with comprehensive upgrades expected to enhance its dexterity.

In short, this series of disruptive changes will propel human society forward. Therefore, with overall market liquidity easing, it’s reasonable to assume that robots will return to the mainstream of technology growth investments.