Humanoid Robots Outrun Usain Bolt-And Signal the Next Rare-Earth Demand Wave

Highlights

• China's Tiangong Ultra robot ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, beating Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record at the Beijing World Humanoid Robot Games.
• Morgan Stanley projects the global humanoid ecosystem could exceed $5 trillion by 2050, driving roughly $800 billion in incremental critical-mineral demand.
• Humanoid robots rely on high-performance NdFeB permanent magnets, making neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium critical to large-scale deployment.
• China's dominance in rare-earth processing and permanent-magnet supply chains gives it a structural advantage in manufacturing humanoid robots at scale.

Humanoid robotics just crossed a symbolic threshold—and potentially another for rare-earth demand.

At Beijing’s World Humanoid Robot Games (opens in a new tab), China’s Tiangong Ultra completed the 100-meter sprint in 9.39 seconds, eclipsing Usain Bolt’s 9.58-second human world record. Honor’s Lightning followed at 9.47 seconds. Tiangong’s progress is striking: the robot required 21.5 seconds to win the same event only one year ago.

Source: AFP (Pedro PARDO)

For Rare Earth Exchanges®, the larger story is what happens when increasingly capable robots move from demonstrations into factories, warehouses, and eventually homes. Morgan Stanley projects the global humanoid ecosystem could exceed $5 trillion by 2050, with more than 1 billion humanoids potentially deployed. Its research also estimates approximately $800 billion of incremental critical-mineral demand across rare earths, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, with rare earths expected to be particularly important.

As REEx previously highlighted in its coverage of the Morgan Stanley outlook, humanoids contain numerous motors and actuators—applications where high-performance NdFeB permanent magnets can provide compact size, efficiency, and torque.

AI may provide the brain, but advanced materials provide the muscle. If humanoid deployment scales anywhere near Morgan Stanley’s trajectory, robotics could become a major new source of demand for neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium.

China’s advantage therefore extends beyond building fast robots. It already dominates much of the rare-earth processing and permanent-magnet supply chain needed to manufacture them at scale.

The sprint in Beijing lasted 9.39 seconds. The strategic race for the materials behind the robots will last decades.