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Daily Pulse: June 1, 2026 — Robot Vacuum Market Reshuffles as M&A Accelerates

SinoBot Editorial

Headline: Robot Vacuum Trio Fights as Revenue Grows but Profits Shrink

China’s robot vacuum market is stuck in an unprecedented squeeze. A recent 36Kr analysis reveals that both Roborock and Ecovacs — the two dominant players — are experiencing revenue growth without profit improvement, albeit for different reasons. The conclusion is the same: the market is saturating fast.

Ecovacs’ domestic performance has suffered from pricing pressure under the national subsidy policy. Roborock, meanwhile, has stumbled in its diversification efforts — according to its prospectus, roughly 90% of revenue still comes from robot vacuums and related accessories, with the diversification strategy yet to bear fruit. Roborock’s market cap has fallen from a peak of over 100 billion yuan (“the thousand-billion robot vacuum”) to around 30 billion yuan.

However, overseas expansion has emerged as the real growth engine. Global home cleaning robot shipments reached 32.72 million units in 2025, up 20.1% year-over-year. Roborock leads with 17.7% global market share for the second consecutive year. But competition abroad is fierce — Dreame is expanding rapidly overseas, while Ecovacs accelerates its push into Europe and Southeast Asia. The “involution” battle is now going global.1

Industry Briefs

Leju Robotics Files for ChiNext IPO, Seeks 2.6 Billion Yuan

The capital market’s robotics fever extends from Unitree to Leju. Leju Intelligent (Leju Robotics) filed for a ChiNext IPO on May 19, seeking to raise 2.6 billion yuan (≈$360M) — roughly 10 times its 2025 annual revenue of 258 million yuan.

Leju’s latest funding round (October 2025) valued the company at 4.33 billion yuan post-investment. Its revenue has grown at a CAGR of 118.68% over the past three years. The IPO proceeds would fund a humanoid robot industrialization base, an embodied AI R&D center, and large-scale high-quality dataset construction.

But controversy is brewing: Leju accumulated losses exceeding 160 million yuan from 2023 to 2025 (including nearly 70 million yuan in 2025 alone). The gap between its loss-making operations and the massive fundraising target has sparked debate about whether “robot company valuation bubbles” are forming.23

Kepler Robot Acquired at a Discount: Hangzhou Kelin Takes Control for 300M Yuan

The humanoid robot sector has recorded its first “sellout” case. On May 19, A-share listed company Hangzhou Kelin (688611) announced it would acquire a 41.57% stake in Kepler Robot for no more than 300 million yuan, bringing its total holding to 51%.

The “discount” nature of the deal is striking. According to Sina Finance, Kepler’s valuation effectively fell to roughly 30% of its earlier valuation within a month — a significant gap between what early-round investors paid and the current transaction price. Kepler becomes the first Chinese humanoid robot company to exit via controlling stake acquisition by a listed company. Hangzhou Kelin, which posted its first annual loss since listing, is betting on humanoid robots as a turnaround strategy.

As of the announcement date, Kepler had approximately 47 million yuan in confirmed orders with market-validated application scenarios. Financially, however, the company remains in a cash-burning phase.45

Humanoid Robots Enter Deep Water: From Hype to Hiring

As mass production timelines from Unitree, Leju, and XPeng become increasingly concrete, the industry’s focus is shifting from “who can build” to “who will buy” and “who will operate.”

Multiple recruitment platform data show that humanoid-robot-related job postings surged over 200% year-over-year in the first half of 2026, with motion control algorithm engineers, embodied AI researchers, and mechatronics engineers in highest demand. Top companies are offering aggressive salary increases — some senior algorithm engineers now command annual pay exceeding 2 million yuan.

Meanwhile, the first cases of “humanoid robot job replacement” have emerged in manufacturing, logistics, and retail. A 3C electronics factory in Suzhou deployed 20 humanoid robots for quality inspection and material handling this year, with annual operating costs per robot roughly one-third of human labor. The industry widely expects 2026-2027 to be the critical two-year window for humanoid robots to transition from “showpieces” to “means of production.”6

Genesis AI Open-Sources Robot Training Platform Goes Viral

A French AI company conquered China’s tech community with a humble dish: tomato scrambled eggs. When Genesis AI released a video of a robot smoothly cracking eggs, slicing tomatoes, stir-frying, and plating the dish in early May, it went viral across social media platforms with over 50 million cumulative views.

On May 28, Genesis AI released Genesis World 1.0, open-sourcing three core projects: the Genesis World physics simulation platform, the Quadrants cross-platform GPU compiler, and the Nyx photorealistic renderer. The significance of this full-stack robot simulation infrastructure: it dramatically lowers the barrier to robot “training,” allowing developers and research institutions to train on complex tasks in virtual environments before transferring skills to real robots.

Industry analysts believe the democratization of physics simulation platforms will accelerate robot training efficiency, reducing the “sim-to-real” transfer cost by an order of magnitude or more.7

Community Voices

“All three robot vacuum giants are bleeding profits — not because their products are bad, but because the war is too brutal. New products every quarter, price wars, channel battles — everyone is burning cash for market share. When the market can only sustain two profitable players, one will inevitably be eliminated.” — Household appliance industry analyst Mr. Chen

“The Kepler sellout case reveals a harsh reality: not everyone gets to finish this race. Early funding doesn’t last long. If you can’t deliver on commercialization, being acquired may be the best possible outcome.” — A VC investor

“That Genesis AI tomato-egg video genuinely blew my mind. Not because a robot can cook — that’s been done. But the fluidity and success rate of the motions — it wasn’t performing, it was genuinely doing.” — Zhihu user @AI Robot

Sources

SinoBot Daily Pulse — 5 minutes, China hardware in perspective

Footnotes

  1. 36Kr, “Robot Vacuums Can’t Find Easy Money,” May 18, 2026 ↩

  2. The Paper, “Leju Intelligent ChiNext IPO Accepted, Plans to Raise 2.6 Billion Yuan,” May 20, 2026 ↩

  3. Jiemian, “IPO Radar — Leju Intelligent Pushes for IPO, Loss of Nearly 70M Yuan Yet Seeks 2.6B,” May 21, 2026 ↩

  4. 36Kr, “Well-Known Humanoid Robot Sold at Discount: Hangzhou Kelin Takes Control of Kepler for Just 300M Yuan,” May 28, 2026 ↩

  5. Sina Finance, “Valuation Slashed to 30% in a Month: What Are the Risks for Hangzhou Kelin’s Kepler Acquisition?,” May 29, 2026 ↩

  6. Xinhua, “Hangzhou Kelin Acquires 41.57% Stake in Kepler Robot for Up to 300M Yuan,” May 20, 2026 ↩

  7. GeekPark/Zhihu, “Genesis AI, Famous for Tomato-Egg Robot Video, Open-Sources Its Robot Training Platform,” May 28, 2026 ↩