Why US–China collaboration is key for the robotics trade

Yahoo Finance Video and Josh Lipton

Wed, February 18, 2026 at 8:00 PM GMT+9

As part of Yahoo Finance’s Bot & Sold robotics special, KraneShares senior investment strategist Derek Yan joins Asking for a Trend host Josh Lipton to explain that the US and China are both dominating respective segments of the robotics industry, and what collaboration between the two nations could look like in the future.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Asking for a Trend.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

Which nation state do you think leads right now? I mean, from your vantage point, would you say it’s the US? Would you say it’s China? I’m I’m interested where you see the most innovation occurring.

00:15 Speaker B

I think there’s like two kinds of innovations here. Uh the US without a doubt is leading in the AI, in the models, in the intelligence part. Uh we have the best researchers and talents in Silicon Valley providing um the large model, also the the world model that’s that’s driving the progress of robotics. But I think in China, they are leading something else, especially around the manufacturing, um delivering the robots in a very cost effective way. Uh we have seen that this collaboration can make a lot of success, right? Think about like all the um like Apple is a great example, like but like, I think going forward, if we want to see the robotic to be successful, you not only need very high level intelligence, but also you want it to be affordable so everyone can use it. So, like if you can think about China, they can make like electric vehicles and drones like so affordable. So, for humanoid robotic, China actually has a better advantage uh in the long term in terms of escape, um making this very scalable business.

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