At Bosch Connected World 2026 in Berlin, Bosch announced deepening its commitment to China as a key market and innovation hub, accelerating into robotics and automation. China employs 57,000+ Bosch employees with 149.8B yuan ($20.8B) in 2025 sales.
Rather than manufacturing complete humanoid robots, Bosch focuses on supplying core components: sensors, actuators, automation platforms, AI-enabled systems. The company sees billions of euros in robotics opportunities.
Bosch established the Bosch Robotics Center China (BROC) in January, dedicated to embodied AI and humanoid robotics, leveraging China's manufacturing and supply chain strengths.
Key development: Bosch signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Chinese startup Spirit AI, which recently topped RoboArena with its Spirit v1.6 model (1,924 pts vs Nvidia's 1,881). The partnership covers robot data collection, model training, and industrial deployment.
Spirit AI has raised 1.5B yuan ($222M) in its fourth funding round within three months.
This collaboration represents a significant convergence of century-old industrial expertise and cutting-edge embodied AI.
