Xiaomi CEO Predicts Humanoid Robots Will Replace Factory Workers Within Five Years
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun says the rise of humanoid robots is not a distant vision but an imminent transformation that will reshape global manufacturing within the next half decade. In a recent interview with Beijing Daily, Lei forecasted that humanoid robots will take over a wide range of factory roles in as little as five years, driven by rapid advances in AI, robotics, and smart manufacturing.
Lei pointed to Xiaomi’s own electric vehicle plant as a preview of this future. There, an AI-powered X-ray vision system now inspects large die-cast components in just two seconds. The system operates ten times faster and over five times more accurately than human inspectors, demonstrating how intelligent automation is already outperforming people in speed, reliability, and precision. According to Lei, such breakthroughs show that the shift toward fully automated production lines is already underway.
He emphasized that China is on the cusp of a trillion-yuan humanoid robotics industry—one that will require broad collaboration across the robotics ecosystem. No single company, he argued, can build the future alone. Instead, he called for open engineering platforms, shared research frameworks, and industry-wide cooperation to accelerate innovation.
Xiaomi plans to introduce humanoid robots directly onto its assembly lines within the same five-year window. These robots will take over repetitive and high-precision tasks that still rely on human labor today. The company’s earlier CyberOne humanoid prototype, alongside major investments in AI, robotics, and intelligent EV technologies, provide the technical foundation for this leap.
While factories are the first frontier, Lei believes the larger opportunity lies in domestic humanoids capable of operating in complex, dynamic home environments. Meeting these demands will require major advancements in locomotion, manipulation, perception, and decision-making—an engineering challenge he sees as inevitable and transformative.
Lei frames this evolution as part of China’s broader national strategy to modernize its manufacturing sector. As costs rise and global competition intensifies, he argues that China must move beyond dependence on cheap labor and into an era of fully intelligent production. In this vision, robots perform manual work while humans shift toward higher-value roles in design, strategy, and innovation.
The message is clear: for Xiaomi and China’s manufacturing sector, humanoid robots are no longer an experimental curiosity. They are the next industrial revolution—and the countdown has already begun.
