UBTECH and China Telecom unit Tianyi sign pact aiming at 1 million home companion robots in 3 years

UBTECH and Tianyi Telecom Terminal signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement on November 9, 2026, unite.ai reports, citing the robotics company's official WeChat account. Tianyi is a wholly owned subsidiary of China Telecom Group, responsible for terminal operations and terminal-ecosystem cooperation. The stated aim is to help the household-companion robot-terminal industry exceed one million units within three years unite.aiunite.aiunite.aiOpen source ↗. A separate three-year goal covers more than 100,000 ultra-bionic humanoid, wheeled humanoid and related terminals.

Both thresholds describe the industry scale the partners aim to help reach, not deliveries already made. The partnership combines China Telecom's channel network, customer base and household and industry digital-ecosystem resources with UBTECH's humanoid-robot technology and products.

Sales channels and rollout plan

Gui Xuan, Tianyi's deputy general manager, described a path with three parts: lowering adoption barriers through new business models, encouraging uptake through hands-on experience, and expanding into industry-specific applications. Planned commercial work includes coordinated procurement and marketing of robots, rental services, packages that combine service benefits with terminals, and robot experience trials in telecom stores. The companies intend to refine products and services repeatedly for household companionship and commercial-service settings, using Tianyi's nationwide service channels.

Joint laboratory and technical plan

At the signing, the companies unveiled the Tianyi Telecom Terminal–UBTECH Robotics Joint Innovation Laboratory. Its four priorities are scenario discovery, product customization, application validation and standards development unite.aiunite.aiunite.aiOpen source ↗.

The technical plan calls for a bidirectional capability-packaging system. Robot speech interaction, visual recognition and emotional computing would be connected with telecom cloud-network infrastructure, quantum technology, satellite services, security and eSIM, so that capabilities can be packaged and invoked in both directions. Hao Baoyu, UBTECH's senior vice president, said the company will increase product research and development for household companionship and commercial services. He added that telecom cloud-network and security capabilities will be embedded into robot bodies, and products will be developed jointly around user requirements.

UBTECH says its full-stack technology covers core components, complete-machine design and operating systems. It groups its work into four areas: an embodied-intelligence brain, a human-like cerebellum, high-performance robot bodies and swarm intelligence. According to the company, its products have been batch-tested in industrial, commercial and household settings.

UBTECH also reports that a smart factory of 10,000-unit scale entered operation in the second half of 2026, and that multiple product lines have entered mass production and delivery unite.aiunite.aiunite.aiOpen source ↗.