A Chinese robot factory opened in Serbia five days after Bosch announced Europe's first. Unitree lost €26 billion in four days and its founder never smiled. XPeng raised $900 million for a robot that has sold zero units. This is the physical AI story Europe's business leaders are not being told.
Welcome to The Robot Bureau. Rogier is a European founder who spent 15 years building companies in China. Lei is a Chinese founder who spent 15 years building companies in Europe. Every month we take the biggest headlines in humanoid robots and physical AI, dig out the real story behind each one, and pitch them to each other. Then we decide which story makes the front page, which one is a nothing burger, and which one gets spiked.
This month:
Serbia opens Europe's first humanoid factory, built by Minth and AgiBot, five days after Bosch announced one for UK start-up Humanoid. Why three industrial giants all took the worst job in robotics, and what Schaeffler is really doing.
XPeng's robotics unit is valued at $6.3 billion with zero robots sold, which is more than the car business that shipped 100,000 vehicles last quarter. We read what IDG Capital and Gaorong actually said.
A 20-month-old Chinese start-up sold 8,000 robot dogs to families at €1,281 each, then signed a €128 million elderly care deal in Japan. Why the cute robots are the ones getting into the house, and why Europe gets them first.
Chinamaxxing 2.0. Thirty million people entered China visa-free last year, industrial tourism is in the new Five-Year Plan, and European executives are flying to Shenzhen to learn rather than to sell.
Unitree makes €76 million profit on an €18.6 million research budget, a seventeenth of what Lego spends. Now it has raised €760 million to build the one thing it has never built. What DeepSeek's three-year lock-up tells you.
The World Humanoid Robot Games added 21 job events. Last year was a school sports day. This year was a job interview.
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