In a February 13 interview, Wang Xingxing, founder and CEO of Yushu Technology, argued that “embodied intelligence” — artificial intelligence that operates through physical agents and sensors — is still in its infancy but will become far more consequential than the mobile‑internet era. Wang described the sector as being on a steep climb: a platform phase now that, if trends continue, could expand by orders of magnitude compared with today’s applications.
Embodied intelligence refers to AI systems that are not confined to screens and servers but are integrated with bodies — robots, drones, autonomous vehicles and other edge devices that perceive, move and act in the physical world. Where large language models have accelerated software‑only applications, embodied intelligence requires the tight fusion of perception, control, hardware design and real‑world testing.
Wang’s claim is not mere hype. The mobile internet rewired commerce, media and social life over a decade; embodied systems promise to rewrite parts of the physical economy — logistics, manufacturing, elder care, agriculture and last‑mile services — by automating tasks that today require human presence. That combination of tangible economic reach and enduring demand for physical services is why proponents expect growth that could be many times larger than the consumer app boom.
But the path to scale is different and harder. Embodied systems need reliable sensors, efficient edge compute, resilient controls, safe human‑robot interaction and mature supply chains; they also encounter harder regulatory and safety constraints than cloud software. Those constraints explain Wang’s “climbing” metaphor: breakthroughs in algorithms must be matched by industrial innovation and standards before mass deployment becomes routine.
China has structural advantages that make such a future plausible: deep manufacturing capacity, concentrated component suppliers, fast‑moving startups and governments comfortable with directing resources to strategic technologies. Venture capital and industrial policy together can compress the time it takes for prototypes to reach production, but they cannot eliminate the technical and social frictions that come with moving intelligence into the world.
The business and geopolitical stakes are high. If embodied intelligence scales as Wang predicts, demand will surge for specialized chips, sensors, batteries and robotics platforms — creating winners among hardware suppliers and systems integrators. It will also raise questions about exports, standards and labour displacement, putting governments and multinational firms into competitive and regulatory contests over supply chains and safety regimes.
For international observers the immediate takeaway is pragmatic: embodied intelligence is not a short‑term consumer fad but a long‑term industrial transition. The current phase is one of experimentation and incremental deployment, but strategic investors, policymakers and corporate leaders would be wise to treat the sector as foundational infrastructure for the coming decade rather than a niche robotics novelty.