Around the Spring Festival in 2025, the appearance of Unitree's wheel-legged robot dog and DeepSeek-V3 has become a major event in the AI circle, demonstrating the rapid progress of China's AI technology, and the creative dance program of the Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Snake has aroused widespread attention from the industry to humanoid robots. After the opening of the Spring Festival, the AI concept sector and individual stocks led the market, and the robot sector rose significantly. Wind data shows that since the beginning of this year, the Wind Robot Index has risen by 24.29%, and the CITIC Robot Index has risen by 25.18%.
The beneficiary sectors rose, and the performance of the robot-themed fund was among the best. Wind data shows that among the equity public funds, the top six returns are all robot theme funds, with returns of more than 50%, and the first Penghua carbon neutrality theme fund has an annual return of more than 60%, and among the top 20 active equity funds in the annual income this year, there are 8 funds as theme funds.
Yan Siqian, fund manager of Penghua Carbon Neutrality Theme Fund, said that in the era of AI, the main line of science and technology is expected to become a national consensus, and there are two reasons why he is optimistic about technology stocks and robots. First, Yan Siqian pointed out that the current opportunity of the era of AI is a global resonance and an opportunity for the vigorous development of China's science and technology, and DeepSeek's surprise attack has made global computing power equal and opened the AI+ era. From the cloud to the end, from the B-end to the C-end, from the industrial to the consumer, medical, intelligent driving, from the investment of technology giants to the access of street stores to DeepSeek, AI+ is in full bloom. Second, robotics is an industry with AI+ trillion space, from 0 to 1, the industry has just begun, and China is facing the opportunity to overtake and lead the world again.
Deepseek empowers the robotics industry
At the private enterprise symposium on February 17, 2025, Wang Xingxing, CEO of Unitree Technology, attended and spoke. On the stage of the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, 16 humanoid robots H1 of Unitree Technology and 16 actors from Xinjiang University of the Arts participated in the creative fusion dance "Yang BOT" directed by Zhang Yimou, and the R&D team prepared more than 130 dance moves for the robot, including arm rotation, body dance, formation transformation, etc., so that the robot can accurately dance to the rhythm of the music, showing the excellent results of domestic humanoid robot research and development.
In October 2024, the National and Local Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, together with leading enterprises and institutions in the industry, released the first batch of embodied intelligence standards for humanoid robots in China.
On January 18, 2024, the "Implementation Opinions on Promoting the Innovation and Development of Future Industries" jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 7 departments proposed to strengthen future high-end equipment, break through high-end equipment products such as humanoid robots, and drive the industrialization of new technologies with complete machines to create a world-leading high-end equipment system.
In November 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Innovation and Development of Humanoid Robots", which clearly stated that humanoid robots are expected to become disruptive products after computers, smartphones, and new energy vehicles, which will profoundly change the production and lifestyle of human beings and reshape the global industrial development pattern.
"A series of actions shows how much attention the state attaches to the humanoid robot industry. At the same time, major Internet manufacturers and car factories at home and abroad have successively laid out humanoid robots, which has further increased the popularity of the plate. Together, these factors have been an important driving force for the sector's sharp rise. Shen Cheng, manager of Quam Technology Kinetic Energy Fund, said.
According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's "Research Report on the Development of Humanoid Robot Industry (2024)", humanoid robots are expected to become new terminals after personal computers, smart phones, and new energy vehicles, forming a new trillion-level or even ten-trillion-level market.
Focusing on the industrial chain, Wells Fargo Fund pointed out that Morgan Stanley's recent humanoid robot research report divides the humanoid robot industry chain into three core links: brain, body and integration, among which overseas companies lead the core components such as generative AI models and computing chips, which are key players in the "brain" link, and thanks to the mature manufacturing system and cost advantages, China has a significant advantage in the "body" link.
DeepSeek is also expected to empower the development of the robotics industry by reducing the cost of large model training and improving R&D efficiency.
Wells Fargo Fund pointed out that China's supply chain advantages in the "body" link will continue to be highlighted, becoming the main supplier of global robot hardware, and domestic parts companies are expected to quickly achieve large-scale effects driven by global leaders; The open-source nature of DeepSeek is expected to lower the industry threshold at the "brain" level, and if we see the breakthrough progress of embodied AI and the launch of domestic chips in the future, it is expected to form a further positive catalyst for the software side.
"There is a close positive correlation between the rise of the robot sector and the exit of DeepSeek." Shen Cheng said that because the landing process and the scope of the final application of the robot depend to a certain extent on the performance of the large model. The iterative progress of the DeepSeek large model can really empower the robot in terms of technology, such as improving the intelligence level of the robot and enhancing its multimodal perception ability, helping the robot to better perceive the environment and identify the object, so that its decision-making and actions are more accurate and efficient.
Shen Cheng also pointed out that the training cost of DeepSeek is low, which reduces the investment cost of robot companies in AI model training, so that enterprises have more resources for other R&D and production links of robots, or may accelerate the technology iteration and commercialization process of the robot industry. "In addition, from the perspective of capital market expectations, the success of DeepSeek also allows investors to see China's strength and level in the field of AI, making investors more confident in domestic scientific and technological progress, and at the same time, more optimistic about the prospects of domestic robot-related manufacturers." Shen Cheng said.
Robot-themed funds led the gains
Benefiting from the outbreak of the AI sector and the robot sector, the performance of the robot-themed fund has increased significantly. According to the Wind classification, as of February 19, 172 of the 832 robot theme funds in the whole market had an annual return of more than 10%, and the highest returns were Penghua Carbon Neutrality Theme Fund A share and C share, with annual returns of 61.78% and 61.65% respectively. The third and fourth largest funds were Yongying Advanced Manufacturing Smart Selection A share and C share, with annual returns of 58.55% and 58.47% respectively.
Fund managers who achieve excellent results do not happen overnight. Before the sector exploded, fund managers did a lot of homework and conducted in-depth research on the robotics industry, so that the managed funds could obtain good returns when the sector rose.
Shen Cheng said in an interview that by the end of 2024, Quam Technology Kinetic Energy Fund will have a comprehensive layout of the humanoid robot sector, including the body, actuators, sensors, drive control, transmission devices, equipment, materials and other links; At the same time, combined with the progress of industrialization, the optimal target is selected by comprehensively considering factors such as flexible space, certainty, barriers to subdivided industries, and the company's competitive advantage. In terms of investment strategy, Quam Technology Kinetic Energy Fund adopts a combination of top-down and bottom-up methods, adheres to the concept of "keeping the right and surprising", closely tracks the macro trend and the pulse of the meso industry, on the one hand, through the layout of the white horse standard to build a solid portfolio bottom position, on the other hand, digging deep into the dark horse target with poor expectations, and strives to take into account the flexibility and stability of the portfolio.
A person from AVIC Fund said that the large model is not only a breakthrough in the software layer, but also the starting point of the intelligence of the physical world. Large models allow AI to move from "perceptual intelligence" to "decision-making intelligence", and decisions must interact with the physical world (i.e., embodied intelligence). Therefore, humanoid robots, as the ultimate carrier of general AI, have become a more deterministic track than pure software applications. It is based on this judgment that AVIC Fund decisively chose the humanoid robot track with the greatest potential in AI applications for heavy positioning. As the culmination of AI technology, humanoid robots have a wide range of application scenarios, covering industrial manufacturing, medical care, home services and other fields, and have a huge market development space. In the early stage of the layout, although the humanoid robot industry is still in the early stage of development, and the performance of related enterprises is not outstanding, considering the trend of technological development and future market potential, AVIC Fund has firmly invested.
Talking about the future of the robot sector, Shen Cheng said in the 2024 quarterly report that at Tesla's 2024 annual shareholders' meeting, Elon Musk predicted that the ratio of humanoid robots to humans will exceed 1 to 1 in the future, and there will be more than 10 billion humanoid robots in the world; The hardware update will be completed at the beginning of 2025, thousands of units will be mass-produced in 2025, and generalization tasks can be performed in 2026. At the 2024 NVIDIA GTC conference, the basic model of humanoid robots, ProjectGR00T, was released. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a follow-up interview that the development of a general humanoid robot base model is one of the most exciting topics in the field of AI today, and humanoid robots will become mainstream in the future, and their manufacturing costs may be much lower.
Wells Fargo Fund pointed out that reviewing the market performance of A-share humanoid robots since 2022, the characteristics of thematic investment are more obvious, the technological progress of overseas leaders is the core driver of the market, and the accelerated development of AI models, the introduction of domestic policies and the entry of enterprises are also catalysts. Looking backwards, the mass production of humanoid robots in 2025 is imminent, and the trend market can still be expected, among which the domestic supporting industrial chain bound to overseas leaders is more certain, and the pace of technological progress and mass production is expected to become the two main lines of traction of the market, and the expected difference mainly comes from the rapid development of the domestic industrial chain. In terms of parts, it is recommended to pay attention to key links with high value and technical barriers, such as actuators and dexterous hands.