From sports courts to street corners: Galbot brings autonomous humanoid retail to the city
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Galbot is making its first commercial foray outside mainland China by launching three Galbot Stores in Hong Kong, the city’s first retail stores operated entirely autonomously by humanoid robots. Starting from September 1, the first stores at the Hung Hom harbourfront, Wan Chai harbourfront and Kai Tak Sports Park are…
Galbot, a company specializing in autonomous humanoid retail, is set to expand its reach beyond mainland China with the launch of three Galbot Stores in Hong Kong. Starting September 1, these stores, featuring the humanoid robot store manager "Xiao Gai," will be the first in the city operated entirely by robots. The introduction of these autonomous stores represents the latest expansion of a commercial model already deployed at scale in mainland China.
The Hong Kong launch showcases the general-purpose capabilities of Galbot's embodied intelligence, which has proven its autonomy across various scenarios, including home, catering, and retail, at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing. The robot can understand customer requests, identify and retrieve products, and deliver items autonomously, all without any remote human control.
The initial stores will offer cultural and creative products from both Hong Kong and mainland China, with customers able to interact with Xiao Gai in Cantonese, Mandarin, or English.
The Hong Kong rollout is backed by over a year of real-world commercial operations in mainland China, where the "Galbot Store" smart retail solution has been deployed at approximately 200 locations across nearly 50 cities. These deployments provide continuous real-world operational data, feeding back into model iteration and capability improvement, creating a cycle of deployment, data optimization, and capability upgrades.
Hong Kong was chosen as the first market outside mainland China due to the city's openness to emerging technologies, its multilingual and multicultural environment, and its international character. The launch of Xiao Gai as a store manager on Hong Kong's streets signifies the transition of embodied intelligence from an abstract technology concept to a practical part of everyday consumer life.
Galbot's success in Hong Kong highlights how general-purpose embodied intelligence can increasingly extend into a broader range of service environments.
Written by urgent.news from SCMP Business's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
