First the chips, now the robots: Washington draws the next line

America's telecom regulator, the FCC, has added "foreign humanoids and robot dogs" to its Covered List.

The target is China. Roughly 85 percent of the world's humanoids come from there.

From robot dogs to power inverters

The list covers humanoid robots, robot dogs and self-driving machines above two kilograms, provided they carry sensors, a network connection and their own control software. Internet-connected power inverters are included too, the devices that link solar panels and battery storage to the grid.

The ban applies only to devices seeking new market access. Models with existing authorization stay on sale. The US Department of War can grant exemptions.

For Unitree, China's best-known robot maker, the North American launch planned for August 12 is now off.

First the Pentagon, now the telecom regulator

In June, the Pentagon had already added Unitree to its list of Chinese military companies, alongside Alibaba, Baidu and BYD. Since then the US Department of Defense cannot sign contracts directly with these firms.

There is also a vulnerability that security researchers disclosed almost a year ago. Through the Bluetooth interface, an attacker can take full control of Unitree's robots, and an infected unit passes it on to others within range.

The FCC points to vulnerable supply chains and risks to critical infrastructure.

America's police buy Chinese

A Unitree robot dog costs under $3,000. The Los Angeles police paid $277,918 for a Boston Dynamics unit.

The customer list reflects that. Police departments in Florida, Washington, Kansas and Oregon have bought Chinese robot dogs, the US Army four of them for over $60,000. Unitree never operated in the US directly, selling through licensed distributors instead.

No American manufacturer delivers at those prices.

Unitree, meanwhile, is going public. The listing on Shanghai's STAR Market is set to raise $619 million, at a valuation of roughly $6 billion. Last year the company shipped over 5,500 humanoids and earned $41 million doing so.

The subscription payment deadline falls on August 12, the day of the planned North American launch.

RATHER WATCH THAN READ?

A Unitree humanoid sold for $90,000 two years ago. The entry model now goes for under $6,000.

Beyond the story above, the new episode of our Robotics News digs into that price collapse, 22 minutes from Shanghai.

Also in it: BYD puts its first humanoid into its own car showrooms in early August, two or three per store working as sales assistants. XPeng has built a factory for nothing but robots, 110,000 square metres, and wants to produce over a thousand a month by year end. And Samsung has hired away the robotics chief from Hyundai, the group behind Boston Dynamics, and given him a division reporting straight to the CEO.

Watch the episode

FROM THE TEAM

24 months

This week I spoke at the Rotary Club in Suzhou. The title: China's robots are coming. Who builds them?

The answer is less comfortable than it sounds. China produces 90 percent of the world's permanent magnets, runs more than half of all industrial robots, and files more humanoid patents than the US and Japan combined.

But the supply chain underneath is only half built. The hard parts, the drives inside the joints, the gearboxes and the force sensors, are not made at scale anywhere in the world yet.

That gap will not stay open long. I would give it 24 months. Whoever gets a foot in the door by then becomes a supplier to an industry that is only now taking shape. After that the seats are taken.

Our team knows which manufacturers are looking for those parts. Write to us.

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Watch on demand: Tabs + PwC break down how finance teams are operationalizing usage-based pricing — without the manual overhead.

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5 STORIES YOU MISSED LAST WEEK 

🇨🇳 CXMT gains 466 percent on its first trading day: The memory chipmaker from Hefei listed in Shanghai and has since been the most valuable company on China's mainland market, at 3.31 trillion yuan ($489 billion). CXMT raised 57.92 billion yuan ($8.6 billion), the largest listing in Asia this year and the second largest on the mainland since Agricultural Bank of China in 2010. The company builds DRAM, the chips smartphones and AI servers use to hold data while they work, and held 7.67 percent of the global market in 2025. The valuation sits far above what the current business supports. Investors are betting on a Chinese memory industry that runs without Western suppliers.

🇰🇷 The Kospi gains 17.9 percent in a single day: South Korea's benchmark index closed Friday at 6,695 points, the largest daily gain in its history. Samsung and SK Hynix each rose almost 30 percent. A crash came first: over the three previous days the index had lost more than 17 percent as investors dumped technology stocks, worried about an AI bubble and about competition from China. Microsoft triggered the turn with quarterly results above expectations. The Seoul exchange briefly halted computer-driven trading to calm the market. Two chip stocks are now enough to move the entire index by double digits.

🇰🇷 Samsung: record profit in chips, first ever loss in phones: The group reported its highest ever quarterly revenue and operating profit, up 1,814 percent year on year. Almost all of that profit came from the semiconductor division. The mobile division posted an operating loss for the first time in its history, even though the Galaxy S26 is selling well. The cause is the same AI boom: components have become so expensive that no margin is left in the handset business. The chip division has become the most expensive supplier to its own phone division.

🇨🇳 China holds six of the ten most innovative robot startups: Legal research platform LexisNexis analysed the world's patents on humanoid robots. Six of the ten most innovative startups in the field are Chinese, and the top five places all go to Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. In the software that controls the robot, Chinese inventors have filed five times as many patents as they did ten years ago. The weighting is where it gets interesting: LexisNexis also looks at how often other inventors build on a patent and how many countries it is filed in. Measured by quantity, the US supplies 5 percent of these patents, measured by quality 11 percent.

🇨🇳 Dongfeng shows a 1,500 kilowatt charger: The state-owned carmaker presented a prototype that can be expanded to 2.4 megawatts, matching BYD's fast-charging system. For comparison, a fast charger on European motorways delivers 300 to 350 kilowatts. Dongfeng also showed its first kilovolt drive unit, with 300 kilowatts peak output, built 30 percent more compactly than its predecessor. Both are meant for Epicland, the premium brand Dongfeng is building together with Huawei. In China, charging time now helps decide which car sells.

ALSO LAST WEEK 

🇮🇳 Elevation Capital closes a $500 million fund for Indian AI startups. The firm's ninth India fund targets seed and Series A rounds and follows its $670 million predecessor four years on. Together with a $400 million late-stage vehicle, that puts $900 million on the table. India's AI founders are getting fresh money while the country's broader venture market shrinks.

🇨🇳 PsiBot raises close to $100 million at a $1.48 billion valuation. The round was led by carmaker Chery, making the Beijing startup China's 22nd embodied AI unicorn this year. Another carmaker buying its way into robotics.

🇸🇬 Singapore rewards platform Bundle raises $5.5 million in a pre-seed round. Ethereal Ventures and Further Ventures co-anchored the round, with the money going towards market entry in Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam. Southeast Asian startup funding has recently flowed almost entirely to Singapore, and this deal is one more data point.

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