As China scales production of humanoid robots, its scientists are now extending the technology into the most intimate frontier of human life.
Guangzhou-based Kaiwa Technology (also spelled Kayiwa) has announced it’s developing the world’s first humanoid robot capable of carrying a human pregnancy using an artificial womb. While robots birthing babies might seem extreme, the foundational technology has been advancing rapidly for years.
The Chinese government has shown willingness in the past to engineer reproduction through radical means. Its infamous one child per family policy, which ran from 1979 to 2015, helped create the demographic crisis the People’s Republic is now desperate to reverse. Perhaps with robotics.
Kaiwa claims the technology is already mature in lab settings and could be ready for real-world testing by next year. The project aims to address China’s rising infertility rate, which spiked from 7.5 percent in 2007 to more than 18 percent in 2020, meaning nearly one in five couples struggle to conceive.
Underpopulation is one of China’s top concerns for the future. The country’s population peaked in 2022 at about 1.4 billion and then began to shrink for the first time in six decades. According to UN projections, the Chinese population could drop by nearly half, to 800 million, by the year 2100.
Fewer young workers could worsen labor shortages in manufacturing and services, threatening China’s role as the world’s factory. The shrinking young workforce must also support a growing elderly population in one of the oldest countries.
By 2050, around one third of Chinese citizens will be older than 60. Its aging population is one of the main reasons China is aggressively advancing its next-generation AI and robotics technologies for elder care, medical procedures, and social services.
Zhang Qifeng, known as Dr. Zhang in Chinese media, founded Kaiwa Technology in November 2015 in the tech hub of Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province. The founder and CEO has a PhD from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and did his undergraduate studies in China at the Beijing Technological University. He’s also a guest professor at the Chinese Academy of Management Sciences.
Kaiwa initially specialized in commercial service bots for hospitality, retail, and entertainment applications. Zhang’s team launched over 20 in-house robot models and 40 plus variants, including Kaiwa’s flagship, the Zhanlang K1, a humanoid greeting robots. Zhang also founded Shenzhen Huakong Helicopter Technology in January 2018 and Shenzhen Hannova International Drone Technology in August 2021.
His latest venture, however, has garnered the most attention. In August 2025, Kaiwa announced plans for what it calls the world’s first humanoid gestation robot. It’s essentially a robot surrogate mother equipped with an artificial womb.
The idea is divisive. Supporters argue artificial wombs could reduce risks for women and liberate them from the physical burdens of pregnancy. Critics say the technology is unethical because it deprives the fetus of a natural maternal connection and could commodify motherhood.
Others doubt that artificial wombs can replicate complex biological processes like maternal hormone signaling.
Zhang unveiled the concept during the 2025 World Robot Conference (WRC) in Beijing, which featured more than 500 exhibits and 100 new product debuts as well as the grand opening of the Chinese capitol city’s robot superstore. Described as a female-presenting humanoid, the robot stands about 165 cm (5 feet 4 inches) and is designed to carry a fetus through a full 10-month gestation and give birth.
The robotic birthing person concept builds on prior experiments like the biobag at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2017, which kept lambs alive for weeks in fluid-filled, simulated uterus environments. Labs working on artificial womb tech are mostly focused on saving premature babies, not starting pregnancies from conception.
To date, no experiment has ever taken a fertilized human embryo all the way to full-term in an artificial environment or even animals. So, Zhang’s goals are in uncharted territory and would require significant advances beyond current science.
Unlike traditional incubators or surrogate pregnancies, which handle only parts of the process, the system aims to replicate the entire pregnancy process from conception to childbirth. According to Chinese state media, Zhang’s team has been collaborating with the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIAC) to develop vascularized endometrial tissue.
The robot’s abdomen contains a so-called bio-reactor incubator pod that acts as an artificial uterus. The pod is filled with artificial amniotic fluid, maintained at human body temperature of around 37 °C to mimic the environment of a natural womb. The fetus would be implanted and grown in the fluid-filled chamber, sometimes called a gestation box in Chinese reports.
The unborn child would receive nutrients and oxygen through an umbilical cord-like tube attached to the artificial placenta. An AI-controlled system would pump in required nutrients and remove waste. The concept is said to include sensors and mechanisms to monitor the fetus’s condition and simulate aspects of pregnancy. The robot’s AI brain would sense its movements and even externally simulate a baby bump as the fetus develops.
In interviews, Zhang has said he’s held discussions with government authorities in Guangdong Province regarding policy and legislation regulating the technology. Guangdong is China’s most populous and economically powerful province. Shenzhen is also one of its major cities, which is next to Hong Kong and often called the Chinese Silicon Valley.
China currently has no specific laws addressing artificial wombs, though commercial surrogacy is illegal due to ethical and social concerns. A robotic surrogate falls into an unregulated gray area with many unanswered questions.
But why the humanoid form factor? Zhang says that, unlike a static lab incubator, a synthetic human could provide psychological comfort to parents to be. Critics call it a gimmick, saying the humanoid design only adds complexity to the concept.
At the end of gestation, the robot would go through a delivery process that’s only vaguely described in public reports. Zhang simply claims the robot can give birth like a real person.
According to reports, Kaiwa (Kayiwa) is aiming for a price point under 100,000 yuan (between $13K and $14K). They’re developing a prototype that Zhang says should be ready by the 2026 World Robot Conference next August in Beijing. For a rundown of the next-generation machines introduced during the latest spectacle, watch this related video.