Can you really rent a robot for just one yuan? During the 2026 New Year holiday, Zhiyuan Robot's leasing platform, "Qingtian Zu," officially launched a "1 Yuan Flash Rental" campaign covering ten cities nationwide. Furthermore, to cultivate more leasing service providers, "Qingtian Zu" introduced a "zero-cost entry" policy, waiving both robot rental fees and service fees for the first three months after a rental provider joins the platform. While offering various subsidies, Zhiyuan Robot also set a clear goal: it plans to cultivate 200 high-quality leasing service providers by 2026, ultimately reaching 400,000 users. Behind Zhiyuan Robot's significant bet on the "leasing" model lies a major test for the embodied intelligence industry as it enters the era of mass production, facing the dual challenges of releasing production capacity and absorbing market demand. At a time when humanoid robots are not yet truly capable of performing household chores or "tightening screws" on factory production lines, whether the leasing model can become a path for the industry's commercial breakthrough remains to be seen.

Is it better to "rent" a robot than to "buy" one? The domestic embodied intelligence leasing market surpassed 1 billion yuan in 2025. When discussing the commercial implementation of embodied intelligence, the first question to address is: in the current technological environment, should users rent a robot or buy one? The rise of the leasing model is primarily driven by "purchase anxiety" caused by rapid technological iteration. Since 2025, the evolution speed of embodied intelligence has been comparable to Moore's Law. Zhiyuan Robot's Chairman and CEO, Deng Taihua, once drew an analogy: at the beginning of the year, robots walked like elderly women, but by year's end, they could sing, dance, and talk eloquently. The technology is advancing so quickly that it ironically makes B-end customers hesitant to place orders easily. A robot purchased for several hundred thousand yuan might face technological obsolescence within six months. Additionally, a large number of early adopters are kept out by the high price barrier, often exceeding 100,000 yuan per robot. Against this backdrop, "leasing" provides an effective solution. An industry insider indicated that the domestic robot leasing market exceeded 1 billion yuan in 2025, with over 1,000 companies nationwide engaged in robot leasing services. However, robot leasing prices experienced a "roller coaster" ride in 2025. Robots that commanded daily rents of tens of thousands of yuan in the first half of the year saw prices "plummet" in the second half. Market quotes show that the daily rent for robotic dogs has dropped to a few hundred yuan, while the daily rent for interactive humanoid robots has also fallen back to one or two thousand yuan. The decline in rents is attributed, on one hand, to changes in industry supply and demand. As manufacturers like Unitree and Zhiyuan release their production capacity, robot inventory is no longer a "hard currency." Taking Zhiyuan Robot as an example, it recently achieved mass production of its 5,000th general-purpose embodied robot, a figure that was less than a thousand a year ago. On the other hand, the price drop also reflects the fact that robots still have limited "intelligence." A large number of robots with similar appearances can only perform simple pre-set interactions or dance moves, leading to aesthetic fatigue and making users unwilling to pay a premium for them.

Heavy assets, high operational costs, and susceptibility to damage: How is the "cost accounting" behind the leasing business calculated? As robot supply becomes less scarce and the market becomes more rational, the leasing business requires careful cost calculation. For leasing providers, operators must first raise substantial funds to purchase hardware equipment, facing extremely high initial investment costs. Furthermore, there are high operational costs. Han Yi, CEO of Guangzhou Spark Robot, mentioned that embodied robots are currently still "non-standardized products"; delivery is not simply a physical handover but involves frequent technical upgrades and on-site operational maintenance. Leasing providers must invest significant manpower to solve customers' "inability to use" problems and cope with the continuous maintenance pressure brought by rapid technological iteration. The "delicate nature" of robots is also a major risk; they are prone to damage from falls or impacts and can easily malfunction in complex environments. "Once a hardware failure occurs, factory repairs usually take time, and the leasing provider also bears the loss from downtime," said Zhiyuan Robot Partner and Senior Vice President, Jiang Qingsong. If downstream leasing providers struggle to be profitable, it will ultimately "backfire" on the upstream robot manufacturers. One of the goals of Zhiyuan Robot's launch of "Qingtian Zu" is to attempt to address these pain points through platform-based operation. Li Yiyan, CEO of Qingtian Zu, explained that "Qingtian Zu" not only leases the robot units but also provides accompanying operators to lower the service threshold for leasing providers. To address the issue of robots being prone to breakdowns, the platform offers a "replace, don't repair" service. Additionally, Qingtian Zu has partnered with PICC Property and Casualty Insurance to launch robot damage insurance and third-party liability insurance, resolving compensation disputes caused by some accidental incidents. To attract more leasing providers to join the platform, Qingtian Zu also offers a waiver on machine rental fees and service fees for the first three months. Not long ago, Jiang Qingsong announced a rather aggressive target – Qingtian Zu plans to attract over 10 robot manufacturers to join the platform, cultivate 200 high-quality leasing service providers, engage 3,000 content creators, and ultimately reach 400,000 users by 2026.

From "watching dances" to "doing detailed work": Can platform-based operation leverage a ten-billion-yuan market? How should we view the potential of this market? Li Yiyan believes that the scale of robot leasing is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan in 2026. Li Yiyan stated that the 1 billion yuan scale achieved by the robot leasing market in 2025 was accomplished under conditions where major manufacturers had not yet begun mass production and market demand was primarily driven by early adoption. With the advent of industry mass production and the establishment of professional leasing platforms, robot leasing is moving towards platformization and scaling. He compared past leasing to "hailing a taxi by waving on the roadside," while the future resembles the more efficient "ride-hailing platform model." However, skepticism remains. Some investors expressed that the imagination space for robot leasing depends on when it can truly enter households. The reality is that embodied intelligence still struggles with basic operations like "folding clothes" or "tightening screws," and software evolution still requires time. If robots can only dance, it's difficult for them to transition from "advanced toys" to "productivity tools." Jiang Qingsong also admitted that entertainment performances and interactive displays currently remain the most mature and high-demand areas in the robot leasing market. However, he mentioned that Qingtian Zu will pilot industrial leasing in 2026, involving simple tasks like loading/unloading and handling. Although current robots still appear clumsy, the leasing model indeed provides real application scenarios for embodied intelligence. Globally, "renting" has become an important path for technological iteration. Taking the humanoid home robot Neo, launched by 1X Technologies, as an example, the product sells for $20,000, but users can also choose to pay a monthly subscription fee of $499. In fact, this is not a fully autonomous robot; when encountering tasks it finds difficult to complete, a human operator can take over the robot at any time, and this process data can, in turn, feed back into the robot's algorithms. When the decision to buy a robot is too weighty, "trying it out by renting first" becomes an option. But for this business to be sustainable, it ultimately still relies on the support of technological maturity.