4 Insights with Topic: Robotics
Even for the prepared and informed, at the recent World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC 2025) China has still taken the world by surprise with the debutante of its fleet of over 150 AI-powered humanoid robots. Indeed 2025 marks the beginning of commercialization and production of these futuristic robots, now made reality. While humanoid robots have captured the imagination of the popular media, there has been a more important revolution in the broader robotics industry, where China has emerged, as the global powerhouse, just as it did in renewable energy and electric vehicles. In this article, we discuss how humanoid industrial robots have quickly been integrated in China’s production lines, filling the productivity void from the country’s aging population, while further driving down the manufacturing production costs with high degree of automation with these embodied AI applications.
Aug 06, 2025
China is undergoing a profound economic shift anchored in industrial upgrading and technological self-reliance. Amidst global macro uncertainties, the country's relentless focus on innovation across strategic sectors—ranging from semiconductors and artificial intelligence to robotics, green energy, and biotech—is building the foundation for sustained long-term growth. In this article, we discuss how these structural advances, often overlooked amid cyclical challenges, are already yielding tangible outcomes and positioning China at the forefront of the next wave of global industrial transformation. As policymakers are busy drafting the 15th Five Year Plan, and wrapping up the last stretch of the 14th Five Year Plan, it is also important to note how these innovation-led developments would continue to be at the forefront of the policy initiatives, and inform us of market opportunities ahead.
Jun 22, 2025
It is worth noting that while the significant rally in BATJX – Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, Xiaomi – and the offshore listed tech/internet players have dominated headlines lately, the bottoming out of the overall China market since the policy shift in late September last year started onshore, with A shares experiencing a sharper rebound first and with a more slower but sustained trend, as domestic investors were more sensitive to the reset in policy tones and significant shift in government’s commitment to reviving economic growth and capital market activities. In this article, Partner & Co-CIO David Lai discusses the factors that could drive a more sustained outperformance in onshore equity market, and why it is a good entry point to rotate from offshore to onshore companies in policy supported sectors.
Mar 20, 2025
Premia Asia Innovative Technology ETF (AIT) since its inception in 2018, was designed to capture the Asia leaders powering the growth of existing and emerging innovative technologies. Without a doubt, the hottest theme trending now is the Metaverse, as Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier that the company name change and sees the Metaverse as the “successor to the mobile internet”. While this is still an emerging but quickly evolving topic, there are already considerable number of Asia leaders active in the space as emerging metaverse natives. How can investors position for opportunities early in this space?
Dec 07, 2021