Nvidia and Unitree Release Joint Humanoid Robot Platform for Research Labs

Nvidia announced its first publicly available humanoid robotics system on June 1, 2026, pairing Unitree's H2 robot with the chipmaker's Jetson Thor hardware that contains the Blackwell GPU. The system also includes Nvidia's Isaac GR00T AI models and simulation tools, along with mechanical hands from Singapore-based Sharpa.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive officer, described the robot during a keynote at the Nvidia GTC conference held on the sidelines of Computex 2026 in Taipei, Taiwan.

"Today, we're announcing the Nvidia Isaac Root, a reference humanoid robot, all fully integrated, 25 degrees of freedom on that on each hand made by Sharpa, 31 degrees of freedom on the robot, six feet 150 pounds, just like me," Huang said. He added that the platform runs the new Thor hardware along with Nvidia's full software, data generation, simulation, and runtime stacks.

Nvidia built the system for higher education and university researchers.

Sales of the Nvidia-Unitree humanoid robotics system, primarily to research institutions, are set to start later in 2026. At least four institutions have already committed to using an upgraded version called the H2 Plus, which Unitree plans to release in October 2026.

Those institutions are Ai2 in Seattle, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, the Stanford Robotics Center, and UC San Diego's Advanced Robotics and Controls Laboratory.

The initial customers are research institutions in the United States, Switzerland, and Singapore. Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia's vice president of physical AI simulation, said the H2 Plus will be available for anyone to purchase. The move places frontier humanoid research within reach of every lab, he said.

2 billion yuan, or $620 million, through a listing on Shanghai's STAR board. The exchange is scheduled to review the IPO application on June 1, 2026. Unitree disclosed that more than 40% of its revenue already comes from markets outside China.

PitchBook lists Qiming Venture Partners among the startup's backers. Huang has predicted that physical AI could become a market worth tens of trillions of dollars. He told investors in May 2026 that he expects rapid growth in the robotics segment over the next five years.