Is humanoid robot leasing truly a booming industry or just a transitional phase?

After the Spring Festival Gala, the popularity of robots (300024) quickly spread from the tech community to the general consumer level: some people started discussing when they could buy a robot to take home, while others more practically asked if they could rent one just to experience it.

In fact, the humanoid robot rental market has already begun to expand. On social media platforms, many corporate annual meetings, shopping mall events, and even children’s birthday parties have featured robots.

Xinhua News Agency

Meanwhile, investor enthusiasm for embodied intelligence continues to grow. Since the beginning of the year, several humanoid robot companies have completed new rounds of financing, with valuations rapidly rising to hundreds of billions of yuan. Robot companies are announcing mass production plans, and some brands are even starting to set up offline stores, attempting to replicate the sales model of consumer electronics.

On one side is an industry driven by capital and technology, racing forward; on the other side is a still-watching consumer market. Amid this gap, although embodied intelligence has not yet become widespread, some people have already begun to bring robots into stages, malls, and parties through rental.

But as prices drop rapidly and players flood in, this business is also facing a common challenge for all new technology industries: is this a long-term growth market or just a transitional phase before technology is fully implemented?

Rental as an Entry Point for Embodied Intelligence Consumption

Inquiry calls to rental companies are flooding in.

Aten, head of Beijing Silicon Base Park Technology Co., Ltd. (hereafter Silicon Base Park), told the Daily Economic News: “Since after the New Year, we’ve received three to five hundred calls, but very few actual orders.”

During a consultation with a reporter acting as a user, a Taobao rental provider said that influenced by the Spring Festival Gala, the turnover and usage frequency of robots have increased. “If your budget allows, I recommend renting at least two units, preferably an even number, for a symmetrical effect.” The other party skillfully offered advice: “A single unit can’t perform well, group dances look more impressive.”

Research from multiple market agencies shows that robot rental is rapidly becoming the main way for users to access embodied intelligence products. Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research, told the Daily Economic News that the Chinese robot rental market is expected to reach about 1 billion yuan in 2025, and nearly or over 10 billion yuan in 2026, with an annual growth rate exceeding 900%.

During the Spring Festival, orders on several rental platforms saw a significant increase. Data from Qingtian Rental, a robot rental service platform, shows that from the first to the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, platform orders increased by nearly 70% month-on-month.

For most companies and individuals, buying a robot remains an expensive and risky decision—devices often cost hundreds of thousands of yuan or even millions, and with rapid technological iteration, a purchased robot can quickly become outdated. Renting offers a practical middle ground. Zhang Yi believes that rental solves three problems: unaffordability, inability to use, and rapid obsolescence.

Price fluctuations also confirm this trend.

Zhang Yi explained that at the beginning of 2025, daily rental prices for humanoid robots generally ranged from 10,000 to 20,000 yuan; by 2026, most event rental prices had dropped to 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, with some platforms even offering experience packages for 999 yuan.

Previously, Li Yiyan, founder of Qingtian Rental, mentioned that from March to May 2025, the daily rental price for robots was between 10,000 and over 20,000 yuan, but now you can rent a robot for about 3,000 yuan.

A Taobao-based Yushu Rental offers even more “aggressive” pricing: non-holiday single-unit prices have been pushed down to 4,500 yuan, including tax, technical staff, and all travel expenses.

In the 2026 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, robots from multiple companies performed on stage, from dance to martial arts. The complexity of movements and group coordination capabilities significantly improved, giving the public their first direct experience of the entertainment value of robot performances.

CIC Zhuoshi Consulting Managing Director Yu Yiran believes that the application value of robots, especially humanoid robots, in commercial performances, guided tours, and reception scenarios is gradually being validated. Their role is shifting from “novel props” to “traffic assets,” and the concentrated exposure on platforms like the Spring Festival Gala will greatly increase rental demand.

When technology is still rapidly iterating and prices are not yet stable, rental often becomes the first step for new industry expansion. Before the widespread adoption of smartphones, people rented pagers; before shared bikes, they rented public bicycles. Robot rental may be following a similar path—when people are still unsure what robots can do, they prefer to rent first and see.

How Many Robots Are Needed, How Much “Human Assistance” Is Required

Aten is one of the earliest entrants in this industry. In spring 2025, when Yushu robots became the most popular product on the market, he quickly realized this could be a new business opportunity. At that time, the daily rental price for robots soared to 12,000–15,000 yuan.

Currently, Silicon Base Park owns nearly 30 robots, mainly serving event planning companies, exhibition companies, and corporate annual meetings.

Although the industry’s vision is to bring robots into thousands of households, so far, the main customers for rental are not individual families.

However, the actual consumer scenarios are more diverse than imagined. Aten recalls a memorable order: a mother renting a robot for her child’s 10th birthday to “liven up the party,” he said. Such customers usually do not repurchase, but event planning companies do.

In the rental market, event planning companies are actually the most stable demand source.

On Taobao, a Yushu robot rental provider told the reporter that a single robot rents for about 4,500 yuan per day, and each robot requires a technician on-site to operate. “If you rent two, we’ll assign two technicians,” the staff said.

Currently, robot performances still heavily rely on manual control. For example, during dance performances, each robot needs a remote control, and technicians ensure synchronized movements via the controller. Only then can multiple robots form neat group dances.

Remote control means the robots are not fully autonomous but are controlled in real-time by human operators. Although robots have some visual recognition capabilities and can perceive their environment through cameras, most complex movements still require human intervention.

This means a robot performance is essentially a “robot + human team” operation.

Meanwhile, the working time of robots at events is limited. Several rental providers told the reporter that a fully charged robot can usually operate for 2–3 hours continuously, then needs about an hour to recharge. Under normal event schedules, one robot’s daily working time is roughly 8 hours.

Therefore, large events often require multiple units to rotate, creating a “device + service” business model. Rental companies not only provide the machines but also handle technical support, choreography, transportation, and on-site assistance. As a result, some platforms are proposing RaaS (Robot as a Service), where clients buy a complete event solution rather than just renting equipment.

Is Rental a Transition or a New Industry?

“(Prices) will definitely continue to fall,” Aten believes. “More robots are entering the market, so prices will go down.”

This trend is already evident on the supply side.

2025 is seen as the year of mass production for robots, with many devices entering the market. Platform companies are expanding rapidly. In December 2025, China’s first open robot rental platform, Qingtian Rental, was launched.

Qingtian Rental integrates users, rental providers, content developers, and hardware manufacturers, aiming to transform robot usage scenarios into a convenient sharing model similar to shared power banks, breaking down high operational costs, complex cooperation chains, and severe content homogenization in the current market.

“The essence of platformization is to turn scattered supply and demand into repeatable rules,” Yu Yiran said. “Standardizing pricing, delivery, acceptance, and fault response will greatly improve transaction efficiency.”

On the demand side, events and marketing scenarios remain the largest markets. Data from Qingtian Rental shows that entertainment performances account for about 34% of rental orders, commercial marketing about 31%, and education and cultural tourism about 19%.

These scenarios share a common feature—short-term, concentrated, high exposure.

Yu Yiran believes that the “volume increase and price decrease” in the current robot rental market is the result of supply and demand working together. As the industry chain matures and manufacturing costs decline, equipment depreciation, maintenance, and capital costs will gradually decrease, pushing rental prices downward.

“This industry can continue to exist because it has value,” Aten said. “Rental won’t disappear just because robots get cheaper. In his view, even if robot prices fall, flagship models will still have rental demand.”

However, not all robot companies are willing to focus on the rental market.

A leader in embodied intelligence told the reporter that they are not currently prioritizing rental business but are focusing resources on industrial deployment. The reason is that real productivity applications are more challenging but also have a higher ceiling.

In other words, some embodied intelligence companies see rental more as a cash flow supplement rather than an ultimate goal.

Previously, Gu Shitao, co-founder of Magic Atom, mentioned in an exclusive interview with the Daily Economic News that short-term revenue-generating scenarios for humanoid robots include entertainment performances, rentals, guided tours, and shopping guides. This market is still booming, with strong demand seen in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Europe, the Middle East, and the US.

Gu Shitao believes that for the robot industry to truly take off, it must develop a strong public brand recognition. Robot performances are not just simple sales acts but also a key to unlocking the future empowerment of embodied intelligence across various industries.

Industry Will Face Quality Assurance Tests in the Second Half of the Year

If the first half of 2026 is the expansion period for the robot rental market, the second half may bring another test.

The reason lies in warranty periods. Currently, many robots shipped around 2025 are approaching or entering the end of their warranty. Aten explained that most manufacturers offer a warranty of one to one and a half years, meaning that starting in 2026, many devices will gradually go out of warranty.

While declining prices look “beautiful,” Zhang Yi revealed that one of the challenges for humanoid robots is rapid depreciation—annual depreciation rates of 20–30% and high maintenance costs.

Aten admitted that some brands’ robots need repairs after just two events, while stable brands might only need repairs after about 20 events. Once the warranty expires, repair costs often fall on the rental companies. “For example, a typical repair for Yushu costs between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan.”

For rental companies relying on high-frequency use to amortize costs, this is a new pressure.

From a broader perspective, the rental market plays a special role: it is both the entry point for robots into mainstream life and a “buffer zone” for industry scaling.

Yu Yiran believes that the industry needs to accelerate the engineering implementation of cerebellum and cortex collaboration, enabling robots to perform stably, safely, and repeatedly in complex environments.

In simple terms, reducing dependence on human intervention. Currently, many rental scenarios still require technicians on-site throughout, with one person monitoring one machine. This model cannot scale. Only when robots’ autonomous capabilities are strong enough and remote control becomes a true generalization ability can the rental business model succeed.

“Robots need to lower delivery costs,” Yu Yiran emphasized. “Choreography, training, maintenance costs must decrease to avoid high manual intervention.”

The ultimate determinant of the industry’s future remains the fundamental question: when will robots truly start doing real work? Until then, robots under stage lights will remain the most prominent entry point for this industry. The existence of rental business allows robots to find a self-sustaining commercial path before large-scale entry into factories and homes. Embodied intelligence still likely needs more such “transitional markets” to reach the real world.

Cover image source: Xinhua News Agency

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