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Most of what I published this week asks who pays while something waits. A Beijing AI cloud company signs years of fixed leases, while its customers sign shorter contracts. China’s robot makers are still learning to do paid work, and someone is funding them in the meantime.
What I cannot tell yet is whose patience runs out first: the tenant’s, the landlord’s, or the investor’s.
OPEN UNTIL TUESDAY
In March I wrote that in China’s robot rental market, “every deployed robot effectively arrives with a human engineer.” Rental prices had fallen fast. The people had not gone away.
Before China’s October holiday, Chimelong, a Chinese theme park group, deployed more than 300 robots at its park in Hengqin, next to Macau. About one staff member still assists every three, Huxiu, a Chinese tech news site, reported on October 6. AgiBot, a Shanghai humanoid robot maker, hopes to raise that ratio to 10 to 1, or even 20 to 1.
Robots for Rent, Humans Included is open to all readers until Tuesday, October 13, noon Beijing time.
THIS WEEK
Who Pays While China’s Robots Learn: My first research report, on China’s embodied AI industry.
Chinese Carmakers Push Back on Name Rent: Huawei and CATL gave up ground at two Chinese carmakers. What were buyers paying for?
Who Pays When China’s Compute Sits Idle: A Beijing AI cloud’s biggest customer is also one of its landlords.
What I got half right this quarter: My first Founding Letter. I graded six of my China tech calls in public.
The South China Morning Post quoted me twice this week, on model fatigue in China’s AI race and on Claude’s new Chinese-language interface.
Next week I publish my second research report. Chinese companies now report AI training runs on domestic chips. The report asks what that costs against Nvidia, and who pays the difference.
I also publish my analysis of Ulanqab, a city in Inner Mongolia where about 15 gigawatts of data center capacity has been committed, the Financial Times reported. Power there is cheap. The question is who pays while a finished building waits for its power line.
The robot-rental piece closes Tuesday, October 13. Paid readers keep it, along with more than 240 other analyses, and get my reports at $49 instead of $99.
Founding members also get the full quarterly letter, including the parts I do not publish, and one report a quarter. This quarter’s is the robotics report.
$150/year, or $20/month. Founding membership is $500/year.