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From sports courts to street corners: Galbot brings autonomous humanoid retail to the city
Paid Post:Beijing GalbotCo.,Ltd.3-MIN READ3-MIN
Advertising partnerPublished: 12:00am, 8 Sep 2026Updated: 9:04am, 8 Sep 2026
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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 staffed by humanoid robot store manager “Xiao Gai”, bringing fully autonomous robotic retail services directly into everyday urban settings. Rather than marking a first step from the laboratory into consumer retail, the Hong Kong launch represents the latest expansion of a commercial model that has already been deployed at scale across mainland China. It also comes shortly after robots powered by the same embodied intelligence demonstrated their autonomous capabilities at the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing.
The transition from the competition arena to Hong Kong’s retail frontline highlights the general-purpose capabilities behind Galbot’s embodied intelligence. At the World Humanoid Robot Games, Galbot competed in fully autonomous mode across three scenarios — home, catering and retail — winning gold medals in all three, while sweeping gold, silver and bronze in the retail scenario competition. More significantly, the same embodied intelligence that enabled the robots to perceive their surroundings, understand tasks and complete complex operations autonomously in competition can be applied to different real-world scenarios without having to build a new, hard-coded system for each individual task. In Hong Kong, those capabilities are being put to work in everyday retail: Xiao Gai can understand a customer’s request, identify and retrieve the appropriate product, and deliver it directly to the customer — autonomously and without remote human control.
The initial three stores operate under a “cultural crossover” theme, offering cultural and creative products from both Hong Kong and mainland China. Customers can speak naturally to Xiao Gai in Cantonese, Mandarin or English. The robot autonomously takes the order, turns to select and retrieve the requested product, and hands it to the customer, who can then complete payment by QR code or card. The entire service process is completed without a back-end operator remotely controlling the robot. During the launch event at Kai Tak Sports Park, Financial Secretary Paul Chan experienced Xiao Gai’s end-to-end autonomous service first-hand. The stores also put the technology directly into ordinary public settings, where residents and visitors can interact with a humanoid robot not as a demonstration exhibit, but as a store manager providing an everyday service.
The Hong Kong rollout is backed by more than a year of real-world commercial operations in mainland China. The“Galbot Store” smart retail solution has already been deployed at approximately 200 locations across nearly 50 mainland Chinese cities. In these stores, robots carry out day-to-day retail tasks including product picking, restocking and delivery across a wide range of products. These deployments do more than demonstrate that the robots can perform individual tasks: they provide continuous real-world operational data that feeds back into model iteration and capability improvement, creating a positive cycle of deployment, data optimisation and capability upgrades. As a result, the robots now arriving in Hong Kong are not laboratory prototypes undergoing their first public trial, but part of a commercial solution that has already been tested and refined through large-scale, long-term operation in real retail environments.
Hong Kong was chosen as Galbot’s first market outside mainland China for reasons extending beyond its commercial potential. According to Galbot founder and chief technology officer Wang He, the city’s openness to emerging technologies, multilingual and multicultural environment, and international character make it a particularly valuable real-world setting for embodied intelligence. Hong Kong has also been actively promoting innovation and technology development, creating a supportive environment for emerging technologies to move into practical applications. With Xiao Gai now operating as a store manager on Hong Kong’s streets, embodied intelligence is moving beyond an abstract technology concept and becoming part of everyday consumer life. For Galbot, the launch offers a glimpse of how general-purpose embodied intelligence, once validated across both competitive scenarios and large-scale commercial operations, could increasingly extend into a broader range of service environments.
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