Meta built a humanoid robot prototype with China's Fourier in three months, report says

Meta Platforms, the Menlo Park company that owns Facebook and Instagram, built a prototype humanoid robot with Chinese robot maker Fourier in about three months, The Information reported Saturday, according to Investing.com.

A humanoid robot is shaped roughly like a person, with arms, legs and hands, so it can work in homes and other places built for people instead of needing special equipment.

The prototype, called Max, is meant to explore a robot that could help with chores at home, the report said. It weighs about 106 pounds and is about 1.5 meters, or 4 feet 11 inches, tall. It has a screen that shows facial expressions, speakers so it can talk, and five-fingered hands for picking up small objects. Its "brain" is Nvidia's Jetson Thor, a computer chip built to run AI inside robots. Work on Max 2 began in September, adding better hands, a projector and sensors for climbing stairs. Meta sees such robots as a possible body for Muse, its AI assistant.

Meta told The Information the project is internal research and it has no plans to sell the robots. Meta's robotics vice president, Li-Chen Miller, spent almost two months at Fourier's factory in Shanghai, the report said. In May, Meta bought robotics startup Assured Robot Intelligence.

Fourier, founded in Shanghai in 2015, started out making rehabilitation robots and exoskeletons, wearable frames that help patients walk and move, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, a United Nations agency. Its products are used in more than 2,000 hospitals and other institutions in 40 countries, WIPO said. It released its first humanoid, the GR-1, in 2023. Its newest, the GR-3, is a care robot about 5 feet 5 inches tall, Fourier said. Working with Fourier lets Meta skip years of building robot bodies and focus on the AI software, its strength. It also ties a U.S. tech giant to a Chinese supplier at a time of trade tension between the two countries.

The best-known U.S. rival is Optimus, the humanoid from Tesla. Tesla said in October that it had started production of Optimus on high-volume lines at its Fremont factory. CEO Elon Musk said it will take at least a year to reach 20,000 robots a week, that sales to outside companies are expected around the end of 2027, and that much AI work remains before the robots can handle open-ended tasks. Unlike Max, Optimus is meant to be sold.

The market is growing fast, and China leads it. About 25,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in the first half of 2026, up 432% from a year earlier, and Chinese companies such as AgiBot and Unitree built more than 95% of them, research firm IDC said, according to Forbes. Morgan Stanley expects shipments in China alone to grow from about 50,000 this year to 446,000 by 2030, CNBC reported. Still, it is unproven whether buyers will keep ordering the robots and earn back what they pay for them, research firm TrendForce said. A robot that does household chores is likely still years away.

Source: Investing.com, summarizing The Information, Oct. 31, 2026, WIPO profile of Fourier, Fourier's CES announcement, Tesla's third-quarter shareholder letter, Tesla earnings call transcript, Forbes on IDC data, CNBC on Morgan Stanley's forecast and TrendForce.