- Chinese robotics company says some workers ‘want to be replaced’ by its humanoid robots
- Agibot has launched its range of humanoid and quadruped robots in the UK B2B sector
- The company’s leader in Europe and the United States also stated that robots could become nurses and teachers.
An executive at Chinese robotics firm Agibot said the company believes its humanoid robots could replace certain human workers and that “in some jobs, they want to be replaced.”
Agibot, founded in 2023 by two former Huawei engineers, makes humanoid, quadruped and cleaning robots for the business-to-business (B2B) sector, advertising use cases such as manufacturing, cleaning, entertainment and construction.
The company recently took its 15,000th unit off the production line and announced its expansion into the UK market at an event in London on June 30.
In a press conference at the event, attended by TechRadar, AgiBot Europe and America president William Shi told reporters that “we have to take into account people who do dangerous, boring and repeatable jobs; these types of jobs can be replaced very easily.”
Shi added: “For some job descriptions, they want to be replaced because it’s very boring, very dangerous and very high risk – no one wants to do this.” [kind of job]”.
‘Replaced by robotics’
Agibot’s product range includes the full-size A3 humanoid robot, the mid-size X2 humanoid robot, and the D1 range of quadruped robots (with form factors that resemble those of dogs, although the company never describes them as such).
Although the company has just landed in the UK, its robots have been successfully deployed in manufacturing facilities in China. A recent YouTube livestream shows the G2 industrial robot “at work” at the Longcheer electronics factory, where humanoid robots are deployed alongside human employees.
Speaking about Agibot’s implementation with Longcheer, Shi said: “They have a lot of workers on their feet for eight hours a day. They take a smartphone, turn it over and put it in a box. And then they take the box and go to the next phase of production.”
“These kinds of steps can easily be replaced (and are expected to be) by robotics,” he continued, “because that doesn’t create value or create happiness for people. They don’t learn when they do this work. They don’t invent things.”
Currently, Agibot products are not autonomous, but each is equipped with a three-part AI model, each of which controls interaction (with people), locomotion (movement), and manipulation (of the local environment, i.e. picking up things), respectively.
The company is actively aiming for autonomy, driven by usage data collection and further development of AI, but Shi emphasizes that Agibot humanoids will remain “under human control and expectations.”
Raising children with robots
In addition to manufacturing, Shi highlighted baristas, live entertainment workers and even teachers and nurses as professions that could be filled by robots: “There is a big lack of nurses in every country, from China, to the United States and Europe, and also a big lack of teachers.”
“Most children’s questions can be answered [by robots] – phonics, science and math questions, or even some common conversations. You ask about the weather, the humidity; “You can ask all robots these questions, because they are based on large language models.”
Still, there’s some distance between using ChatGPT to conduct research and allowing a humanoid robot to teach children, and according to 2025 research by KPMG and the University of Melbourne, while almost three-quarters of UK adults use AI at work, less than half say they trust it.
With the B2C market a distant goal for Agibot and a number of business partners (including Nvidia, which provides chipsets for the robots) supporting the company’s UK launch, it clearly hopes to make big inroads in the B2B industries first and foremost. But Agibot does not rule out a future in which robots are part of our daily lives.
“What we want in the future is that the robot can take some responsibility in daily life,” Shi said, “but they will never make decisions instead of a human.”
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