Is robot leasing a profitable business?

Financial Observer Reporter Zheng Chenye

In one year, the daily rental price of mainstream humanoid robot models has dropped by 80%.

By spring 2025, renting a humanoid robot for a commercial performance can cost up to 10,000 or even 20,000 yuan per day; by March 2026, JD.com’s self-operated flagship store listed the YuShu U1 humanoid robot, including on-site engineer services, starting at 1,796 yuan per day. Robot dogs are even cheaper, at 78 yuan per day.

Prices are falling, but more players are entering the market. In 2025, over 1,500 new robot leasing companies registered nationwide, a 48.1% increase year-over-year. In December 2025, Zhiyuan Robotics’ dedicated robot leasing platform, Qingtian Leasing, launched in Shanghai; early 2026, Wanji Yizhuo followed; JD.com also opened its own robot leasing flagship store.

Spring Festival gave the industry a lively start.

According to data from Qingtian Leasing obtained by the Financial Observer, during the Spring Festival (from the first to the seventh day), the platform’s robot leasing orders increased by nearly 70% month-over-month, with total orders exceeding 5,000 during the holiday. JD’s data also shows that from Chinese New Year’s Eve to the fifth day of the lunar new year, user visits to the platform’s robot products increased fourfold year-over-year, and searches for the keyword “robot” grew 25 times. JD’s self-operated robot leasing business saw transaction volume jump over 100% month-over-month in January 2026, with orders during the festival increasing by 130% overall.

Industry Competition Intensifies

Qingtian Leasing was initiated by embodied intelligence companies Zhiyuan Robotics, Feikuo Technology, and others, and launched on December 22, 2025. CEO Li Yiyan told reporters that Zhiyuan is a founding and major controlling shareholder of Qingtian Leasing, but the platform is open to the entire industry and has already partnered with multiple hardware manufacturers.

In January 2026, Qingtian Leasing completed a seed round of funding led by Hillhouse Capital, with participation from Fosun Chuangfu, Muhua Tech, Dafen Fund, and others. Three weeks after launch, registered users exceeded 200,000, with an average of over 200 orders per day. Recently, the platform also began recruiting city partners nationwide.

The business model is straightforward.

The platform connects with over 200 robot suppliers across various brands and models; on the other side, it serves demand from clients in scenarios such as corporate annual meetings, shopping mall openings, exhibitions, wedding entertainment, and even personal birthday parties.

After clients place orders on the platform, the system automatically matches based on distance, equipment inventory, and the service provider’s past performance scores, with manual intervention for complex scenarios. Once matched, service providers deliver the robots to the site, handling transportation, debugging, operation, and on-site interaction.

Qingtian Leasing’s first city partner, Shi Jian, told the Financial Observer that a typical order process is as follows: first, communicate with the client about needs—venue size, costume customization, specific choreography, etc.; then propose a delivery plan; finally, staff transport the robots to the site, handle debugging, control, and interact with the audience, all inclusive.

Regarding profit models, Li Yiyan said the platform’s revenue comes from a service fee share on orders, but during promotion phases, no service fee is charged, and profitability is not the current focus.

The Spring Festival was the first major test since Qingtian Leasing launched, and the platform’s overall GMV (gross merchandise volume) increased about 80% month-over-month. Orders related to festivals accounted for over 54%, with main scenarios including New Year greetings, temple fair parades, and shopping mall events. Additionally, about 30% of users were first-time renters, with one in three orders from new customers. The platform also launched the “999 Yuan National Robot Experience Plan,” which accounted for about 15% of total transactions.

Wang Mingfeng, Chief Strategy Officer of Qingtian Leasing, told the Financial Observer that the experience plan “is not designed to make money but as a demand detector,” allowing the platform to see whether ordinary people are willing to pay for robot services.

Shi Jian said he has six robots, fully booked from the first to the seventh day of the Lunar New Year. Based on the platform’s recent two-month operational data, each robot handles about 10 orders per month, with an average price of 2,500 yuan.

He estimates the payback period to be 6 to 8 months, “probably shorter, since the platform offers subsidies, and we also take non-platform orders.” “Demand is strongest in scenic spots and parks,” Shi Jian added.

During the Spring Festival, the biggest challenge wasn’t order acquisition but a shortage of manpower. Li Yiyan said some orders beyond capacity had to be politely declined, “that’s also responsible to users.”

But despite the lively scene, prices tell a different story.

Li Yiyan previously stated that from March to May 2025, the daily rental price for humanoid robots was around 10,000 to 20,000 yuan. By the second half of 2025, as supply rapidly expanded, the daily rent for a standard YuShu G1 robot dropped from over 10,000 yuan to about 5,000 yuan.

Between December 2025 and January 2026, during the Christmas, New Year, and corporate event peak seasons, prices briefly rebounded. But by the Spring Festival of 2026, the basic humanoid robots’ daily rental prices had generally fallen into the 3,000 to 4,000 yuan range.

On March 11, at JD’s self-operated flagship store, the listed prices were even lower: YuShu Go2 series robot dogs started at 78 yuan per day, and humanoid robots with engineer services started at 1,796 yuan per day.

The main reason for the price decline is increased supply.

According to IDC, a well-known market research firm, global shipments of humanoid robots reached about 18,000 units in 2025, a year-over-year increase of approximately 508%, with China accounting for about 14,400 units, or 84.7% of the total.

Additionally, Beijing CCID Publishing Media’s “2025 Humanoid Robot Market Research Report” states that six Chinese companies—YuShu Technology, Zhiyuan Robotics, Leju, Accelerate Evolution, Songyan Power, and UBTECH—together hold 74.1% of global shipments.

YuShu’s founder Wang Xingxing has publicly stated that the company’s shipment target for 2026 is 10,000 to 20,000 units, roughly four times that of 2025.

The release of capacity combined with new entrants has directly driven down rental prices. According to JD’s public data, over 90% of domestic embodied intelligence brands are now on JD’s self-operated leasing platform; in February 2026, Wanji Yizhuo announced completing an angel round of funding, planning to cover 300 cities nationwide.

While daily rental prices have fallen 80%, operating costs have not decreased proportionally.

Transport, debugging, engineer on-site presence, and safety measures for each event do not see a corresponding drop. During the Spring Festival, profitability relied on concentrated festival demand and high order density, but once the peak season passes, order density drops, and the revenue per robot diminishes. Shi Jian’s estimate of a 6-8 month payback is based on an average of 10 orders per month at 2,500 yuan each; if post-holiday orders decline, this payback period could be disrupted.

However, for platforms like Qingtian Leasing, expanding the network may be more urgent than short-term profitability.

Li Liheng, Co-President of Qingtian Leasing, told the Financial Observer that city partners are not franchisees or agents, and the platform does not rely on franchise fees for revenue. “The platform handles products, technology, traffic, and branding, while partners focus on local delivery and service.”

He explained that the initial openness with zero entry barriers will eventually balance supply and demand through data. The platform supports partners with four main aspects: equipment procurement subsidies below market price; standardized debugging and maintenance SOPs; systematic operational training; and intelligent order distribution by region.

Li Liheng clearly characterized this business: “This is not a traffic business; burning money won’t build a moat. It’s a capability business—system, operations, fulfillment, and service—each must be strong.”

“Market is far from saturated”

During the Spring Festival, entertainment performances and commercial marketing accounted for 65% of Qingtian Leasing’s orders. These needs are mostly seasonal, tied to festivals and large events. Once the festival wave recedes, whether the business can sustain depends on what else robots can do beyond dancing.

Pán Helín, member of the Information and Communications Economic Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told the Financial Observer that the current market “doesn’t lack industrial robots; what’s missing are embodied intelligent robots with autonomous decision-making capabilities.”

He sees a common problem among many robot companies—using the development model of industrial robots to develop embodied intelligent robots. “The main difference is autonomy and versatility.” He believes most humanoid robots are still in the “small brain development” stage, requiring operators and remote controls to perform actions, lacking autonomous decision-making.

“Breaking through application scenarios addresses the monetization of embodied intelligence but doesn’t solve the fundamental technical shortcomings,” Pán Helín emphasized. “R&D and scenario breakthroughs must go hand in hand. The key is shifting from simple control and execution to autonomous decision-making and understanding complex environments.”

He also believes the industry needs a new evaluation system to quantify autonomous capabilities, similar to the L1 to L5 ratings for autonomous driving.

Technical bottlenecks limit current scene applications. Guo Yandong, founder of embodied intelligence company Zhifang, told the Financial Observer that he remains rational about the C-end market. “Robots entering homes is not yet mature or realistic; it requires joint improvements in cost, reliability, and versatility, which will take about five more years.”

Zhifang’s robots are already used in automotive manufacturing, semiconductors, biotech, and other fields, handling sorting, loading, inspection, and other tasks. In 2025, Zhifang signed a three-year contract for 1,000 units with the world’s third-largest panel manufacturer, Huike, which Guo called “one of the industry’s largest non-performance-based commercial orders.”

“The real importance isn’t who’s more lively, but who is building certainty for the next few years,” Guo Yandong said.

Overall, supply-side changes are rapid.

Jibang Consulting, a well-known tech industry research firm, recently forecasted that global shipments of humanoid robots will surpass 50,000 units in 2026, with a year-over-year increase of over 700%. CITIC Securities also predicted in a recent industry report that with mass production and supply chain cost reductions, the overall cost of humanoid robots could fall to around 80,000 yuan or even lower.

The “2025 Humanoid Robot Market Research Report” also states that Chinese companies are pursuing a “mass production and scene adaptation” route, leveraging full industry chain manufacturing capabilities to achieve rapid deployment under a “hardware first, software iteration” model, while US companies focus more on “technological iteration and high-end markets.”

Capital investment in the industry is accelerating. According to public data, in the first 11 months of 2025, financing in China’s embodied intelligence industry reached 33.473 billion yuan, four times that of the same period in 2024; there were over 305 funding events involving more than 600 investors. Additionally, leading hardware manufacturers like YuShu Technology, Leju Robotics, and Zhiyuan Robotics are all advancing IPO processes.

Of course, as costs decrease, more robots will be available for lease, covering a broader range of scenarios. IDC’s 2025 report listed RaaS (Robotics as a Service) as one of six major trends for embodied intelligence robots, noting that business models are shifting from one-time hardware sales to service-oriented approaches.

Li Yiyan told the Financial Observer that there is currently a window between robot technological capabilities and societal expectations, “leasing is the best way to present during this window.” He believes that in 2025, global humanoid robot production was only 18,000 units, and 99% of people have yet to experience robots, so “the market is far from saturated.”

CEO Zhang Yi of iiMedia Research once publicly stated that China’s robot leasing market size in 2025 was less than 1 billion yuan, but is expected to approach or even surpass 10 billion yuan by 2026.

He also drew a parallel: the development path of robot leasing might resemble that of the drone industry. The domestic drone market’s explosion was not driven by agriculture or industrial applications but by widespread city-based drone performance leasing services, centered on “equipment and solution leasing.”

Li Yiyan also expressed optimism about the robot leasing business.

(author Zheng Chenye)