China develops its own circular AI financing scheme, report finds

A Financial Times report found much of the demand for Unitree Robotics' humanoid robots comes from state-backed training centers that buy the machines and then sell the resulting training data back to Unitree. Unitree's shares rose 460% in its Shanghai IPO, valuing the company at around $50 billion.

Why it matters: This echoes the circular-financing criticism leveled at Nvidia and other US AI companies, where investment flows in a loop that can inflate valuations without necessarily reflecting external demand. It suggests these financing structures are becoming a general feature of AI-adjacent industries globally, not a US-specific phenomenon, warranting similar scrutiny of China's robotics and AI valuations.