A Chinese robotics start-up beat Nvidia on a global AI ranking. Is a new tech war brewing?
A Chinese robotics start-up beat Nvidia on a global AI ranking. Is a new tech war brewing?
Publish Date: 2026-06-03 21:00:00
Source Domain: www.scmp.com
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The tech competition between China and the United States has intensified as artificial intelligence moves from digital to real-world applications, particularly in robotics.
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US chip giant Nvidia unveiled a new Cosmos 3 model, designed to enable physical AI to “think before it acts,” igniting competition in this space.
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Chinese start-up Spirit AI, based out of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, announced its foundation model for embodied intelligence, Spirit v1.6, became the first Chinese model to top the RoboArena global leaderboard.
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The Spirit v1.6 model scored 1,924 on the RoboArena benchmark, surpassing Nvidia’s Cosmos3-Nano-Policy, which scored 1,881; DreamZero, another Nvidia project, secured third place with 1,763.
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The RoboArena benchmark, co-developed by Nvidia and elite institutions including Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley, assesses the translation of generalist robot policies into real-world actions.
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The rivalry highlights robotics as the new frontier for AI, with Nvidia forming strategic partnerships with China’s Unitree Robotics and Singaporean robotic hand leader Sharpa, indicative of global interest in the field.
