Nvidia just hit a jackpot in the Chinese market

Jensen Huang walked onto the GTC Taipei stage on June 1 and described a humanoid robot by its weight and height before anything else. Six feet. 150 pounds.

"Just like me," he said.

The robot standing behind him was built by a Chinese startup. And that detail is more significant than it first appears.

What Nvidia announced at GTC Taipei and who it chose

Nvidia (NVDA) announced the Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot on June 1 at its GTC Taipei conference, describing it as the first open humanoid robot reference design built on its Isaac platform.

For the hardware body, Nvidia chose Unitree Robotics , a Hangzhou-based Chinese startup , whose H2 Plus humanoid stands nearly six feet tall, weighs 150 pounds, and has 31 degrees of freedom across its body. The hands come from Singapore-based Sharpa, offering 25 degrees of freedom for dexterous manipulation. Onboard compute is powered by Nvidia's Jetson Thor system with a Blackwell GPU.

"Today, we're announcing the Nvidia Isaac Root, a reference humanoid robot, all fully integrated, 25 degrees of freedom on each hand made by Sharpa, 31 degrees of freedom on the robot, six feet 150 pounds, just like me," Huang said in his keynote. "We built this for higher education and university researchers, because for them to build this is insanely hard to do."

Why Nvidia picked a Chinese company for its first humanoid robot platform

Unitree was not chosen by accident. The company has spent years developing humanoid robots at a price point well below Western competitors, and it has built a reputation among robotics researchers for combining capable hardware with an open development approach that makes experimentation accessible.

More Nvidia:

• Nvidia is losing an industry that saved it from bankruptcy
• Nvidia CEO makes surprising admission on OpenAI and Anthropic
• Goldman Sachs just found a reason to like Nvidia stock again

Nvidia's selection puts Unitree at the center of a platform that will ship to some of the world's most prestigious research institutions. Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Ai2, and UC San Diego's Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory are among the first institutions that will use the Isaac GR00T reference design, according to Unitree press release.

That association matters for Unitree well beyond the sale itself. Being the hardware partner in Nvidia's first public humanoid research platform is the kind of validation that changes how a company is perceived globally , and by investors.

What the Isaac GR00T platform actually does

The Isaac GR00T development platform spans the full robotics development workflow: data capture, simulation, training, model evaluation, and deployment. Researchers can use Isaac Teleop to capture demonstration data, Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab for virtual training, and Isaac ROS middleware to deploy trained policies onto physical robots, according to Nvidia press release.

The platform also includes Nvidia's open foundation models for humanoid reasoning, allowing robots to learn tasks and adapt to real environments without being programmed for every scenario individually. The Isaac GR00T reference workflow for Unitree's G1 robot will also be available on GitHub and Hugging Face for developers who want to build outside the full hardware package.

The strategy mirrors what Nvidia built in AI. CUDA embedded Nvidia into every major deep learning workflow years before most people understood what that meant. Isaac GR00T is attempting to do the same thing for humanoid robotics, creating a software dependency before the market reaches scale.

The Unitree IPO adds another layer to this story

The timing of the GTC Taipei announcement is not coincidental for Unitree. The company has filed for an initial public offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market and is seeking to raise approximately $610 million to $620 million, according to Unitree press release. Qiming Venture Partners is among its backers.

Being chosen by Nvidia as its first humanoid hardware partner, announced from the stage of one of the most-watched tech conferences of 2026, is exactly the kind of endorsement that strengthens an IPO narrative. Unitree goes into its listing as the company that Nvidia and Stanford use to build and test humanoid robots.

Key details from Nvidia's Isaac GR00T humanoid robot announcement:

• Product: Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot; first open humanoid robot reference design built on Nvidia's Isaac platform; announced at GTC Taipei on June 1, 2026, according to CNBC.
• Hardware: Unitree H2 Plus humanoid body (6 feet, 150 pounds, 31 degrees of freedom); Sharpa Wave five-fingered hands (25 degrees of freedom); Nvidia Jetson Thor compute with Blackwell GPU, CNBC confirmed.
• Software: Isaac GR00T platform covering data capture, simulation (Isaac Sim/Lab), training, evaluation, and deployment; Isaac ROS middleware; open foundation models on GitHub and Hugging Face, according to Nvidia press release.
• Research partners: Stanford University, ETH Zurich, Ai2, UC San Diego Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory among first institutions, according to Unitree press release.
• Availability: Isaac GR00T Reference Humanoid Robot available from Unitree in late 2026; G1 reference workflow available soon on GitHub and Hugging Face, Unitree press release confirmed.
• Unitree IPO: filed for listing on Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market; seeking to raise approximately $610 million to $620 million; backed by Qiming Venture Partners, Unitree press release confirmed.

What this means for Nvidia's humanoid robotics ambitions

Nvidia's data center business built itself by becoming the infrastructure layer that every AI developer depended on before anyone knew how large the market would become. The company is attempting the same move in physical AI. By launching the Isaac GR00T platform now, before humanoid robots reach commercial scale, Nvidia is trying to establish the same kind of software dependency that CUDA created in machine learning.

The choice of Unitree as the hardware partner is part of that strategy. Unitree's accessibility and price point means more researchers can actually use the platform, which accelerates adoption of Isaac GR00T as the standard development environment for humanoid robotics. The more research institutions that build on it, the harder it becomes for any alternative platform to displace it.

For Nvidia investors, the robotics story is still early. Data center revenue dominates the financials and will for some time. But the June 1 announcement in Taipei is a meaningful signal about where the company's next platform play is heading, and the fact that a Chinese startup is at the center of it tells you something about where the most competitive humanoid hardware is coming from right now.

Related: Nvidia's latest product is a game-changer

The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.

This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 2:03 AM.