A humanoid at sixteen thousand dollars
Unitree unveiled the G1 humanoid at a base price of 16,000 dollars — roughly a fifth of its own H1 at 90,000 dollars.
Why it matters
Research humanoids had been priced like national-laboratory equipment. At 16,000 the platform cost less than the ALOHA bimanual rig had a year earlier, and that is what put humanoid bodies into ordinary university groups and small companies, the ones that then collected the data behind the humanoid foundation models.
The robot stands 127 cm and weighs 47 kg. For comparison, the same company’s larger H1 had a base price of 90,000 dollars, so the G1 costs about a fifth of that. The report attributes the difference partly to the smaller frame, which permits smaller motors and less material. The number here is a price, not a demonstration of capability, and should be read that way. Confidence is medium: secondary sources give the weight variously as about 35 kg and 47 kg, and later prices differ from the launch figure; only the launch price and the figures in the cited report are used here. What the maker’s page says in September 2026. Price from $13.5K, weight with battery about 35 kg, 23 or 43 degrees of freedom; the strings 16,000, 127 and 47 do not occur on it. The launch price of 16,000 dollars and the 47 kg in this record come from The Robot Report on the day of the announcement; the page describes the product two years later, and the difference in weight may be a difference of versions rather than an error in either source.