US AI firm accelerates international rollout of Chinese humanoid robots

US-based company OpenMind is accelerating the international expansion of Chinese humanoid robots by providing OM1, an open-source, AI-native operating system tailored for robotics. OpenMind CEO Jan Liphardt highlights China’s leadership in robotics hardware due to its integrated supply chains and competitive domestic market, and the company is already collaborating with several Chinese firms. OpenMind’s software is hardware-agnostic, supporting diverse platforms such as humanoids, quadrupeds, wheeled robots, and drones, and integrates multimodal AI inputs (vision, audio, spatial data) to enable sophisticated robot decision-making. The company focuses on robots interacting directly with humans in sectors like retail, healthcare, and education, deliberately avoiding the mature industrial robotics market. Liphardt, who also teaches bioengineering at Stanford, emphasizes that hosting software and data infrastructure in the US can help Chinese robotics firms navigate regulatory, commercial, and technical challenges to scale in Western markets. OpenMind’s collaboration extends beyond technology to include marketing support, addressing the