A Fourier GR Nano on display during the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference on July 20, 2026, in Shanghai. Photo: VCG

After Meta reportedly agreed to a partnership with Chinese robotics company Fourier to develop a humanoid robot prototype with the code name Max, Fourier told the Global Times on Monday that any further updates would be shared through official channels.

Although the collaboration between Meta and Fourier has not yet been formally confirmed by the Chinese company, Chinese experts said that the case still offers a valuable perspective on China-US cooperation in the robotics sector.  The two countries' industries are highly complementary, their partnership is driven by market demand and mutual benefit, and deliberately erecting barriers or pursuing decoupling in this field is unrealistic.

On Sunday, a report by The Information attracted attention among other foreign media outlets. According to the report, Meta built a prototype humanoid robot with Chinese robotics company Fourier in about three months, and the two are already working on a second version.

Max stands about 1.5 meters tall and runs on Nvidia's Jetson Thor chip, according to The Information. It has a screen that mimics facial expressions, built-in speakers and five-fingered hands for picking up small objects.

Meta's robotics team traveled to China to work with Fourier. Li-Chen Miller, Meta's vice president of product for robotics, spent almost two months at Fourier's factory in Shanghai, the report said.

Work on Max 2 began in September. It is due to get a new torso, better hands, a projector and extra sensors to help it handle stairs, according to the report.

There have already been signs of Meta's cooperation with China's robotics sector. Public job postings revealed that Meta recruited a robotics supplier development engineer in Shanghai in September, followed by a product design engineer for its Robotics Studio in Shenzhen in October. The Shenzhen role spans the full hardware development cycle from early-stage design and validation, through system integration, to mass production.

Meta has built substantial artificial intelligence (AI) research capabilities through models such as Llama and Muse, yet hardware manufacturing remains a relative weakness. Fourier, by contrast, is a leading Chinese humanoid robotics firm with proven mass-production engineering expertise and significantly lower product costs than its US counterparts, Chen Jing, a vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Monday.

"If the reported partnership is accurate, this combination of engineering readiness and cost efficiency would explain why Meta turned to Fourier rather than other American companies, highlighting the complementary strengths of the Chinese and US robotics industries," Chen noted.

Fourier was founded in 2015 in Shanghai. It began with rehabilitation robots and gradually expanded into humanoid robotics. Following its GR-1 and GR-2 models, the company unveiled its third-generation humanoid robot, the GR-3, in August 2025, designed for social companionship and assisted-care scenarios. In April that year, it released its first open-source humanoid robot, the Fourier N1.

Cases of US AI giants teaming up with Chinese robotics companies are by no means isolated. In June this year, Chinese robot producer Unitree announced the H2 Plus, the first humanoid robot reference design built on the Nvidia Isaac™ GR00T development platform. The reference design helps democratize frontier humanoid robotics research by providing access to advanced hardware and an open software stack without requiring proprietary platforms.

"China boasts the world's most complete robotics industrial chain, with high localization rates for core components such as motors, reducers, and sensors. As a result, the cost of finished robots is only a fraction of that of comparable US products, and mass-production ramp-up is significantly faster," Chen said. 

In addition, strong demand for factory automation in China has generated abundant real-world operating scenarios and data, which in turn accelerates the training and iterative improvement of embodied intelligence, Chen noted.

"The global humanoid robotics industry is entering a new stage. US companies hold clear advantages in AI and large-language models, while China's supply-chain cost advantages enable robotics companies to become partners of US AI giants in both contract manufacturing and joint research and development. Collaboration that allows each side to leverage its strengths is a natural progression, and so-called decoupling is simply unrealistic," the expert added.