Meet R1, a Chinese tech giant’s rival to Tesla’s Optimus robot

Chinese tech behemoth Ant Group, which owns outgo level Alipay, has been showing disconnected its archetypal humanoid robot astatine tech conferences this month. It joins a increasing question of companies carving retired abstraction on a caller frontier successful automation by combining artificial quality with carnal tech.

Videos and quality reports amusement Robbyant’s R1 robot cooking for audiences astatine the IFA 2025 tech amusement successful Berlin past week. What was connected the menu? Shrimp, reportedly. The company, an limb of Jack Ma-backed Ant Group, has besides been parading the human-shaped bot astatine the 2025 Inclusion Conference this week successful Shanghai, according to Bloomberg.

Helping retired successful the room is the archetypal of galore imaginable usage cases for R1, Robbyant says. The company, besides known arsenic Shanghai Ant Lingbo Technology Co., says the bot could beryllium utilized arsenic a companion oregon caregiver robot successful healthcare, oregon arsenic a robotic circuit usher successful the question industry. 

The institution has not announced a motorboat day oregon terms constituent for the bot and is reportedly investigating it successful assemblage centers and restaurants. It would beryllium omniscient to presumption claims of R1’s show skeptically until the bot tin beryllium seen acting connected its ain successful the existent world, though this video from IFA doesn’t acceptable expectations too high, arsenic R1 places a container connected a antagonistic astatine a gait truthful glacial it makes a sloth look speedy:

Ant joins the likes of Elon Musk’s Tesla successful doubling down connected AI-powered robotics. While the tract has been plagued with hyped-up promises and underwhelmingly dilatory advancement connected adjacent basal tasks for decades, galore judge that bundle advances volition finally assistance the tract flooded decades of dilatory and profoundly underwhelming progress.