On 19 November 2025 Sheen hosted a delegation of senior South African business leaders at the headquarters of AgiBot (智元机器人) in Shanghai.

Who AgiBot are

AgiBot — also known as Zhiyuan Robotics — was founded in Shanghai in February 2023 by former Huawei engineers Deng Taihua and Peng Zhihui, and develops humanoid robots for industrial and service applications. The company announced the start of mass production in December 2024, operates a large-scale manufacturing facility in Shanghai, and is backed by investors including Tencent, JD.com, LG Electronics and BYD.

By early 2026 it was among the highest-volume humanoid robot manufacturers in the world by units shipped. Whatever one's view of where the humanoid sector ends up, that is a company worth standing inside rather than reading about.

Why take a delegation at all

Humanoid robotics is, for most people, a video. It arrives as a two-minute clip, edited, and it is impossible to tell from it what is a research demonstration and what is a product with a delivery date.

Standing in the building answers that question in a way nothing else does. You see the production floor, the units in livery for commercial deployments, the failure modes, the people, and the gap between the demonstration and the shipping product. Some of it is more impressive in person. Some of it is much less. Both are useful.

For South African executives thinking about automation over the next decade, calibrating that gap is worth more than another market report.

What it has to do with a classroom in Cape Town

It is a reasonable question. Sheen teaches coding and robotics to children from the age of six; a Shanghai humanoid factory is a long way from that.

The connection is the pipeline. If this technology arrives in South African industry over the next ten years — in logistics, manufacturing, agriculture and services — then the learners who are in Grade 7 today are the people who will maintain, program and manage it. That means the curriculum they get now needs to be pointed somewhere real, and the people making investment and hiring decisions need to have seen what is coming.

Trips like this are how we keep our own view current, and how we make sure the connection runs in both directions.

The first humanoid at home

Three months later, at the WCED STEAM Conference in February 2026, Sheen brought a humanoid robot in front of a South African public audience for the first time. That was the other half of the same idea: not just seeing the technology abroad, but putting it within reach of teachers and learners here.

Read about our work with schools and industry on humanoid and advanced robotics, or talk to us about a delegation.