NVIDIA (NVDA) announces Isaac GR00T humanoid robot with Chinese robotics start-up Unitree

The NVIDIA Isaac GR00T humanoid robot will be built for academic research, utilizing a Unitree chassis and NVIDIA's Jetson AGX Thor T5000 system.

NVIDIA has announced a collaboration project with Chinese robotics start-up Unitree to create a humanoid robot for AI robotics research purposes. The NVIDIA Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot for Academic Research is slated to be available from Unitree in late 2026.

NVIDIA announced the details of the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot in a press release on its website this week. The robot will utilize a number of collaborative technologies between NVIDIA and Unitree, including NVIDIA Jetson AGX Thor T5000 system-on-module (SoM), which is loaded with an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU. All of this will be loaded into Unitree’s new H2 humanoid chassis.

Unitree Robotics is based in Hangzhou, China. It was started in May 2016 as Hangzhou Yushu Technology and has been producing robots for commercial and academic purposes. The group has reached notable sales, investment, and recognition, and was allegedly preparing its IPO ahead of this news.

NVIDIA’s collaboration with Unitree marks an interesting turn of events for NVIDIA, which has had trouble establishing a legal foothold to do business in the country. Notably, NVIDIA’s previous earnings results forecast excluded potential China data center sales from its revenue estimates.

With NVIDIA investing in robotics, it also puts the tech company in more direct competition with Elon Musk’s own Tesla Optimus line. Stay tuned to the NVIDIA topic for more news and updates.

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