Midea
Last reviewed
May 11, 2026
Sources
20 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v3 · 2,485 words
Improve this article
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
Suggest edit
CtrlK
Last reviewed
May 11, 2026
Sources
20 citations
Review status
Source-backed
Revision
v3 · 2,485 words
Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation.
Midea Group Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 美的集团) is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Beijiao, Foshan, Guangdong, China. Founded in 1968 by He Xiangjian, Midea is one of the world's largest appliance manufacturers and, through its 2017 acquisition of the German firm KUKA, a major force in industrial robotics. In 2025 the company entered the humanoid robot race with the MIRO series, culminating in the MIRO U, billed as the world's first six-armed wheel-leg humanoid. Midea has pledged 60 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) of R&D spending across 2026 to 2028, with artificial intelligence and embodied intelligence singled out as priority areas.[1][2]
Midea was founded in 1968 in Beijiao, a town in the Shunde District of Foshan, by He Xiangjian and a group of local residents who set up a workshop assembling plastic bottle caps. The business shifted into electric fans during the late 1970s and into air conditioners in the 1980s, riding China's post-reform consumer boom. The group listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in September 2013 and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2024.[1]
By 2024 the company reported revenue of RMB 409.1 billion (roughly US$57 billion), up 9.5 percent year on year, with net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 38.5 billion. Midea ranked 246 on the 2025 Fortune Global 500, its tenth consecutive appearance on the list.[3] The group operates in more than 200 countries, runs 41 R&D centres worldwide, and employs over 190,000 people.[4]
Midea's pivot toward industrial automation began in 2015 when it took a minority stake in KUKA, the Augsburg based maker of orange industrial arms used heavily in European car factories. In January 2017 Midea closed a public tender that lifted its holding to roughly 94.55 percent at a cost of about 29.2 billion yuan (around 4.6 billion euros), at the time the largest Chinese takeover of a German company.[5][6] The deal drew political pushback in Berlin and helped trigger a wider tightening of European foreign investment screening rules. Midea later completed a 2022 squeeze out that gave it 100 percent ownership and delisted KUKA from the Frankfurt exchange, with total outlay across the multi-year process reaching roughly 31.5 billion yuan. KUKA's headquarters, board, and most engineering operations remained in Germany under the original agreement.[5]
With KUKA absorbed, Midea built the Midea KUKA Intelligent Manufacturing Science and Technology Park in Shunde, Foshan, which the company calls the largest industrial robot production base in China. Cumulative output from the park had passed 80,000 industrial robots by 2024.[2][7] Midea also owns Swisslog and Swisslog Healthcare, two automated logistics businesses under the KUKA Group umbrella.[7] In 2022 Midea opened a state backed robotics laboratory, and in 2024 it set up a dedicated humanoid robot innovation centre.[1]
Midea showed its first humanoid prototype at the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in late July 2025. The prototype shook hands, gestured, danced, opened bottle caps, and drove screws on stage. The company announced a 1.5 billion yuan ($208 million) embodied intelligence platform and a strategy built around three pillars: components, humanoid robot bodies, and the robotisation of home appliances.[8][9]
The two-armed wheeled humanoid MIRO followed, deployed at Midea's Jingzhou washing machine factory in Hubei for material transport, tub handling, and inspection. The Jingzhou plant later received the first World Record Certification listing as an "AI agent factory," with 14 AI agents covering 38 business scenarios.[10][11] On December 5, 2025, Midea unveiled the MIRO U at the Greater Bay Area New Economy Forum in Guangzhou, the third generation of the MIRO line and a six-armed wheel-leg humanoid that the company describes as the world's first of its kind.[2][12] In April 2026 Midea announced a 60 billion yuan ($8.7 billion) three-year R&D budget that singles out AI, embodied intelligence, and humanoid robots as priority areas.[1]
Midea's business is grouped into a consumer-facing Smart Home Business Group and a Commercial and Industrial Solutions group that contains the robotics, building technology, new energy, and healthcare arms. The B2B side of the company passed RMB 100 billion in revenue for the first time in 2024, with robotics and automation revenue alone reported above 30 billion yuan that year.[3][9]
| Segment | Main brands and units | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Smart Home | Midea, Toshiba Home Appliances, Little Swan, Comfee, Hualing, MDV, Eureka | Air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines, kitchen appliances, floorcare |
| Robotics and Automation | KUKA, Swisslog, Swisslog Healthcare, Midea Robotics | Industrial robots, warehouse and hospital logistics, humanoid robots |
| Building Technologies | Midea Building Technologies (MBT) | HVAC, lifts, building controls |
| New Energy and Industrial Technology | Welling, Hiconics, GMCC | Motors, compressors, power electronics, energy storage |
| Healthcare | Wandong Medical, Swisslog Healthcare | Imaging, hospital automation |
KUKA continues to operate under its own brand and sells industrial arms, controllers, and turnkey production cells to the automotive, electronics, healthcare, logistics, aviation, and consumer goods sectors.[7] Swisslog handles warehouse automation and Swisslog Healthcare supplies in-hospital logistics, including pneumatic tube networks and pharmacy automation.[7] Inside Midea's own plants the robotics unit has been used to cut human handling, with KUKA arms running alongside in-house AGVs and the new MIRO humanoids. The company links these layers through its "Factory Brain," an AI platform that Midea says lifted manufacturing efficiency by more than 80 percent and improved scheduling response times by around 90 percent at pilot sites; one quality inspection step that previously took 15 minutes now takes 30 seconds using AI-assisted glasses tied to digital design files.[11][13]
Midea also embeds AI into its consumer products through HomLux, its smart home operating system, and the Aiport platform that orchestrates appliances across rooms. The company has framed the "robotisation of home appliances" as the long term consumer side of its embodied intelligence work, with humanoid arms eventually expected to handle chores that fixed appliances cannot.[8]
Midea has split its humanoid programme into two tracks. The MIRO line is built for industrial work and is run out of the Midea Robotics unit in Foshan and Shanghai. The Meila line is aimed at commercial and home environments, with smaller bipedal designs intended for retail showrooms and, eventually, household tasks.[12][14]
| Model | Generation | Form factor | Primary use | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MIRO | 1st | Two-armed wheeled humanoid | Material transport and inspection at Midea Jingzhou washing machine plant | In service since 2025 |
| MIRO (updated) | 2nd | Two-armed wheeled humanoid with upgraded perception | Mixed assembly and logistics | Deployed across selected Midea plants in 2025 |
| MIRO U | 3rd | Six-armed wheel-leg humanoid | High-end washing machine assembly at Midea Wuxi plant | Pilot from December 2025, scale up in 2026 |
| Meila | 1st commercial | Bipedal humanoid | Product demos in Midea stores, coffee machine and retail tasks | Pilot in Midea retail stores from H2 2026 |
The MIRO U is Midea's flagship industrial humanoid. It pairs a human-shaped torso and head with six fully actuated bionic arms and a wheeled chassis that can lift vertically and pivot a full 360 degrees in place.[2][12] The design rejects strict 1:1 human mimicry. Midea Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Wei Chang said at the launch that the robot's "core value lies in moving beyond mere form imitation to achieve a leap in operational efficiency within industrial scenarios."[2][15]
| Specification | Details |
|---|---|
| Arms | 6 fully actuated bionic limbs |
| Lower arms | Heavy component handling |
| Upper arms | Fine assembly and fastening |
| Mobility | Wheeled base with vertical lifting and 360 degree in place rotation |
| Simultaneous tasks | Up to 3 |
| Tool swapping | Quick release modules, near-instant changeover |
| Workstation height match | Torso and head positioned at typical bench heights |
| Deployment target | Midea Wuxi High-end Washing Machine Factory |
| Reported efficiency gain | Around 30 percent in production line changeovers |
| First public showing | December 5, 2025, Greater Bay Area New Economy Forum, Guangzhou |
The six-arm layout was chosen so that one machine can replace several humans or a sequence of fixed stations during model changeovers, which are frequent in appliance manufacturing. The lower limbs hold and reposition heavy parts while the upper limbs run fasteners or perform inspection.[12][16] Midea has not published payload, sensor suite, or onboard compute figures for MIRO U.
The Meila line is the consumer facing counterpart to MIRO. Meila robots are smaller bipedal designs intended for retail and home settings. Midea has said the first commercial Meila units will appear in its own retail stores during the second half of 2026 to run product tours, demonstrate appliances, and handle simple in-store tasks like operating a coffee machine.[14][17] Home applications are positioned as a later step that depends on the robotisation of appliances work tracked under Wei Chang's three-pillar strategy.
Midea's robotics stack pulls from several sources. KUKA contributes decades of work on industrial controllers, safety-rated motion planning, and high precision arms.[7] In-house Midea teams handle the wheeled-leg chassis, multi-arm coordination, and the embodied intelligence layer that sits on top. The Factory Brain platform supplies the cloud and edge software that schedules tasks across appliance lines, including those that mix KUKA arms, AGVs, and MIRO humanoids.[11][13]
Key technology elements include KUKA's standard six-axis arm catalogue and collaborative arms developed in Augsburg; the six fully actuated bionic arms in MIRO U with quick-swap end effectors; the wheel-leg base capable of vertical lifting and 360 degree in-place rotation; the Factory Brain platform with AI-assisted inspection glasses tied to digital design files; and the 1.5 billion yuan embodied intelligence platform that trains models on data collected across Midea's factories and home appliances.[8][11][13]
Midea runs its plants as a testbed for its own robotics. The Jingzhou plant in Hubei was certified as the world's first AI agent factory by World Record Certification in 2025.[10] The Wuxi high-end washing machine plant in Jiangsu is the first scale home for MIRO U, with pilot lines from December 2025.[12] The Foshan base hosts the Midea KUKA Intelligent Manufacturing Science and Technology Park, the Midea Digital Science and Technology Industrial Park, and the Midea Innovation Science and Technology Park.[11][18]
| Facility | Location | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Midea KUKA Intelligent Manufacturing Park | Shunde, Foshan | KUKA robot production for China; 80,000-plus robots delivered |
| Midea Digital Science and Technology Industrial Park | Beijiao, Shunde, Foshan | R&D, AI software, smart manufacturing |
| Midea Innovation Science and Technology Park | Foshan | New product and humanoid robot innovation centre |
| Midea Global Innovation Campus | Shanghai | AI and embodied intelligence research |
| Jingzhou Washing Machine Plant | Hubei, China | First MIRO deployment; world's first AI agent factory |
| Wuxi High-end Washing Machine Plant | Jiangsu, China | First MIRO U pilot line |
Midea has used industry events to push its humanoid story. The August 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai showed the first prototype.[8] The December 2025 launch of MIRO U at the Greater Bay Area New Economy Forum in Guangzhou confirmed the Wuxi pilot.[2] Midea has also taken robotics demos to AWE (Appliance and Electronics World Expo) and the Canton Fair, with more humanoid showings at CES and IFA expected during 2026 as Meila moves toward retail.
| Person | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| He Xiangjian | Founder | Founded the company in 1968; stepped back from day-to-day operations |
| Paul Fang (Fang Hongbo) | Chairman and President | Took over as chairman in August 2012; led the KUKA acquisition |
| Wei Chang | Vice President and CTO, head of robotics | Public face of the MIRO program and embodied intelligence push |
| Metric | Details |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1968 |
| Founder | He Xiangjian |
| Headquarters | Beijiao, Shunde District, Foshan, Guangdong, China |
| Chairman | Paul Fang |
| Employees | Over 190,000 (2024) |
| Revenue (2024) | RMB 409.1 billion (about US$57 billion) |
| Net profit (2024) | RMB 38.5 billion |
| Fortune Global 500 rank | 246 (2025) |
| R&D spend (2024) | Over RMB 16 billion |
| R&D pledge (2026 to 2028) | RMB 60 billion (US$8.7 billion), prioritising AI and embodied intelligence |
| Embodied AI investment | RMB 1.5 billion (about US$208 million) initial platform |
| Stock listings | Shenzhen Stock Exchange (since 2013); Hong Kong Stock Exchange (since 2024) |