Public Tender / Winning-Bid Orders

招投标 / 中标订单（集采）Advanced

State firms, governments, or universities publicly bid out robot purchases, and manufacturers compete for the contract.

Public tendering is the legally mandated procurement process used by government bodies, state-owned enterprises, and universities: the buyer publishes a tender notice with its requirements, manufacturers submit bids to compete, and after evaluation, the winning bidder and contract amount are made public. Centralized procurement means several units' needs are combined into one larger tender. Because winning-bid results are published on public resource trading platforms, this is one of the most reliable ways to verify a robot's real order volume from the outside. Many of the largest early humanoid-robot orders have come from tenders by telecom carriers, state-owned enterprises, and research institutions, often for showroom use, training deployments, or data collection.

ExampleAs reported, in 2025 a subsidiary of China Mobile ran a tender to procure humanoid robots worth about RMB 124 million, won by AgiBot and Unitree, described by media at the time as one of the largest single humanoid-robot orders to date.

Also called: Centralized Procurement
Related: Task-Oriented Grasping · Framework Order / Letter-of-Intent Order · Shipment Volume · Research & Education Market · Embodied AI Training Ground (Robot Data Collection Center) · Scenario Owner (End Customer)
Sources: Call for bids - Wikipedia
As of: 2026-09