Humanoid builders now compete on two ledgers that rarely move in lockstep. One ledger counts reviewable deployment artifacts: a customer’s production line, a unit milestone a company must stand behind, a securities filing a regulator can approve. The other ledger counts attention, measured in press cycles and preview events that may or may not leave a dated artifact behind. Reading the week through the artifact ledger places the race’s center of gravity in Spartanburg and Shanghai, where factories and filings supplied the week’s load-bearing evidence [E1][E3][E4][E5].
Figure returned its third-generation humanoid to BMW’s Spartanburg assembly plant on a workflow the company calls sequencing [E1]. The job chains part-picking, locomotion-manipulation, and cart-pulling into a single manufacturing task instead of isolated demonstrations [E1]. Figure’s prior model, Figure 02, contributed to thirty thousand cars assembled at the plant in 2025, giving BMW a multiyear production history to cite [E1]. A separate agreement with Catalyst Brands places humanoids in a Reno distribution center, extending Figure’s commercial track beyond automotive [E9].
AgiBot rolled its fifteen-thousandth robot off a production line in late June, marking the milestone with an industrial-grade AGIBOT G2 unit [E2]. Independent trade coverage confirmed the production count, lending external corroboration to a company-issued milestone [E8]. Volume at that scale shifts embodied AI from prototype theater toward repeatable manufacturing output [E2][E8].
UBTech reports Walker S2 at thousand-unit-level small-scale mass production [E5]. Deployments include NIO’s factory, where Walker S units already operate on an automotive line [E5]. The pairing of stated production scale with a named OEM customer supplies the kind of dual artifact—unit count plus factory placement—that the week’s scoreboard rewards [E5].
China’s securities regulator approved Unitree’s roughly $619 million Shanghai STAR Market IPO, a raise that would value the company at about $6.2 billion [E3][E4]. Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoids in 2025 and reported a net profit of ¥590 million for the year, figures the listing filing forces into public view [E3]. IPO approval itself becomes an artifact: regulators vet production claims, revenue, and shipment counts before registration clears [E3][E4].
Tesla’s Optimus dominated the week’s humanoid coverage on different terms. Press reporting described Elon Musk previewing an Optimus assembly line and repurposed Fremont capacity for robot production, yet no dated Tesla filing or customer deployment accompanied those accounts [E7]. Barron’s carried the assembly-line preview as press chatter, and this piece treats it the same way: coverage without a reviewable company artifact does not advance the deployment ledger [E7]. Against Figure’s BMW line, AgiBot’s unit count, and Unitree’s regulator-backed filing, Optimus entered the week with zero dated deployment artifacts on the record [E7].
Xpeng’s IRON humanoid remains at the factory-training stage on the company’s own roadmap [E6]. Mass production is expected later in 2026, a timeline published on a news page without a customer line or shipment disclosure behind it [E6]. IRON shows how roadmap promises still draw coverage even as factory placements and production counts define the week’s artifact winners [E6].
A single Optimus factory artifact could reorder the board in a day given Tesla’s unmatched manufacturing base and capital reserves, so absence of announcement cannot be read as absence of progress. Weak-yen financing and China’s IPO channels, meanwhile, are supplying capital goods for the artifact side on terms US private markets rarely replicate, a texture visible in Unitree’s Shanghai listing path [E3][E4]. The counter-case stays live: attention leaders retain the resources to convert a preview into a filing overnight. For now, the reviewable scoreboard runs through Spartanburg’s sequencing workflow and Shanghai’s approval docket [E1][E3][E4].