Tesla Isn’t Nvidia’s Robot Partner — Meet the Company Jensen Huang Chose Instead

TLDR

• Nvidia announced the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot at COMPUTEX/GTC Taipei on June 1, 2026, its first open humanoid robot platform.
• The hardware body is built by Unitree Robotics, a Chinese startup, whose H2 Plus robot stands 6 feet tall and weighs 150 pounds.
• Stanford University, ETH Zurich, and UC San Diego are among the first research institutions to use the platform.
• Unitree has filed for an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, seeking to raise $610–$620 million, with the Nvidia deal boosting its profile.
• China currently produces over 80% of the world’s humanoid robots, while the U.S. expects domestic production to ramp up in the next 12 months.

Nvidia has announced its first open humanoid robot platform, and at the center of it is a Chinese startup most people have never heard of.

At its GTC Taipei conference on June 1, 2026, Nvidia unveiled the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot. The platform is built around the Unitree H2 Plus, a humanoid robot made by Hangzhou-based Unitree Robotics. The robot stands six feet tall, weighs 150 pounds, and has 31 degrees of freedom. The hands come from Singapore-based Sharpa, which provides 25 degrees of freedom for fine manipulation. Onboard compute is powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Thor chip with a Blackwell GPU.

What the Platform Actually Does

The Isaac GR00T platform covers the full development workflow for robotics. That includes data capture, simulation, training, model evaluation, and deployment. Researchers can use Isaac Teleop to gather demonstration data, Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab for virtual training, and Isaac ROS middleware to put trained models onto physical robots.

Nvidia also released open foundation models that allow robots to learn tasks and adapt to new environments without being manually programmed for each scenario. The reference workflow for Unitree’s G1 robot will be available on GitHub and Hugging Face.

Nvidia’s stated goal is to create a standard software layer for humanoid robotics, the same way its CUDA software became the standard for AI development years ago.

Why This Matters for Unitree

Unitree was not a random pick. The company has built humanoid robots at prices below Western competitors and has a reputation for accessible hardware in the research community.

Being chosen by Nvidia as its launch hardware partner puts Unitree alongside Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Ai2, and UC San Diego’s Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory as early users of the platform.

The timing is also meaningful for Unitree’s business. The company has filed for an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market, seeking to raise between $610 million and $620 million. Qiming Venture Partners is among its backers. The Nvidia announcement gives Unitree a concrete endorsement ahead of that listing.

The Broader Robot Race

Nvidia’s move puts it in indirect competition with Tesla, which is also pursuing humanoid robots. Tesla recently stopped production of its Model S and X vehicles and is converting that factory capacity in Fremont, California, to produce its Optimus robot.

Tesla stock dropped 4.6% on the day of Nvidia’s announcement. OpenAI also said it was hiring for a robot division on the same day.

Tesla, Inc., TSLA

China currently produces more than 80% of the world’s humanoid robots. Analysts expect U.S. domestic humanoid robot production to increase materially over the next 12 months.

Nvidia’s data center business still dominates its revenue, but the June 1 announcement signals where the company is building its next platform.

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