Investing in the robotics industry—choosing the right index is crucial! What’s the difference between the National Securities Index (Guozheng) and the China Securities Index (CSI)?

Currently, the robot-related ETFs in the market mainly track two indices: the Guozheng Robot Industry Index and the CSI Robot Index. Although both belong to the robot industry category, they differ in terms of coverage scope and investment style. Understanding these differences will help you choose the right investment direction.

The two indices’ biggest differences are:

Guozheng Robot Industry Index focuses more on robot hardware, with a higher content of “humanoid robots,” while the CSI Robot Index offers broader coverage, including upstream and downstream related industry chains of robots.

Index construction rules: Focused vs. diversified

In terms of index positioning, the Guozheng Robot Industry Index mainly emphasizes a high level of focus on robot hardware. It prioritizes companies involved in robot main bodies (such as complete machine manufacturing) and core components (such as joint/actuator-part manufacturing), and assigns higher weights to companies in these areas, resulting in a higher humanoid robot content in the index.

Meanwhile, the CSI Robot Index places greater emphasis on the diverse coverage of the robot industry chain. Its stock selection universe is broader, and companies that are only tangentially related to the “robot concept” and provide software and hardware support for producing robots may also be included.

In terms of weight allocation, the Guozheng Robot Industry Index has a maximum constituent stock weight cap of 5%, with relatively balanced influence from major constituents on the index.

By contrast, in the CSI Robot Index, the maximum weight of a single constituent stock can be as high as 10%, so the index’s performance will be more affected by the top large-cap constituent stocks.

Guozheng has a higher content of humanoid robots

Humanoid robots are currently the most cutting-edge area in the robot sector. As an entirely new category, humanoid robots require new components and production lines. This “from 0 to 1” industry also contains a large amount of incremental market space.

Among the constituents of the Guozheng Robot Industry Index, roughly 75% of the weight belongs to humanoid-robot concept stocks, while the corresponding proportion in the CSI Robot Index is about 66%. If you especially favor “humanoid robots” as a future industry, the Guozheng Robot Industry Index points more clearly toward that theme.

Data source: Wind, 2026/2/27. Using the definition criteria of the Wind humanoid robot concept index, we screen humanoid robot concept stocks from the two major robot indices, and then, by calculating the concept stocks’ weight proportion within each corresponding index, we obtain the humanoid robot content.

Industry distribution: Focus on robot hardware vs. combine both software and hardware

Robots, industrial control equipment, chassis and engine system, and small household cleaning appliances all have relatively high weights in both indices.

The difference is that the Guozheng Robot Industry Index places more emphasis on the robot industry centered on main-body manufacturing and core components, accounting for 23.7%, while the CSI Robot Index only accounts for 13.9%;

The CSI Robot Index places more emphasis on the industrial control equipment industry used to automate industrial operations, with a 20.5% share, while the Guozheng Robot Industry Index only accounts for 7.3%.

Chassis and engine systems and small household cleaning appliances, which may seem unrelated to robots, in fact have hardware (such as actuators) and AI technologies (such as automatically avoiding obstacles) that can be adapted and applied to robots. Both indices allocate 5%–10% weight to these two industries.

In addition, in the CSI Robot Index, horizontal general-purpose software in the software sector, which can be applied across industries, accounts for 10.20% and has weights ranked among the top.

Comparison of index weights by industry

Data source: iFind, 2026/3/25, Shenwan three-level industry classification.

Major constituents: Humanoid robot hardware vs. software and industrial scenarios

First, looking at the number of constituents and weights, the Guozheng Robot Industry Index has only 50 constituent stocks, but the weight distribution is relatively dispersed and fairly even. The weight share of each individual stock is generally 3%–5%, and the combined weight of the top ten constituents is about 39%.

The CSI Robot Index has an upper limit of 100 constituent stocks (currently including 66). It aims to more comprehensively reflect the entire robot industry chain. However, because its top ten constituents have higher combined weights—about 55%—the index’s performance will be more influenced by those weighty stocks.

There is some overlap between the top ten constituents of the two indices (overlapping stocks are marked in blue in the table below). The humanoid robot hardware manufacturing core targets such as Harmonic and Shuanghuan Transmission are included, but the weight share of these targets in the Guozheng Robot Industry Index is higher than that in the CSI Robot Index.

The industry distribution of the top ten constituents in the CSI Robot Index is clearly more dispersed and broader. The weights are more tilted toward industrial robot and robot supporting software targets. For example, iFlytek, which provides intelligent speech technology for enterprises across various fields, has a weight proportion as high as 10%. It also includes Zhongkong Technology, Dahua Shares, and other targets in the industrial control and security sectors. These types of companies have a closer connection to industrial scenarios.

Data source: iFind, 2026/3/25, Shenwan three-level industry classification.

From an investment logic perspective, the two indices can cater to different needs:

If you are more optimistic about the development of the humanoid robot industry in specific sub-segments, believing that ongoing breakthroughs in hardware manufacturing technology will further drive sustained growth in market demand, then the Guozheng Robot Industry Index—with a higher focus on hardware and humanoid-robot “content”—is the better choice;

If you prefer a broader “one-button” layout covering the entire robot supporting industry chain, then the CSI Robot Index with wider coverage may be more suitable.

At present, among the ETF products tracking the Guozheng Robot Industry Index, Robot ETF E Fund (159530, Connect Fund A/C: 020972/020973) is the largest by scale. As of March 31, 2026, the ETF’s scale is nearly 140 billion yuan. This product’s constituent stocks focus on robot main bodies and core components, with a high content of humanoid robots, and the weight distribution among major constituents is balanced.

Risk reminder: Funds involve risk; investment should be cautious.