Humanoid robot roams NYC, tries on sneakers, grabs hot dogs, and amazes New Yorkers
In July 2025, KraneShares introduced KOID, a $100,000 humanoid robot, in Midtown NYC to promote their Global Humanoid and Embodied Intelligence Index ETF. The stunt involved KOID walking down Fifth Avenue, interacting with people, and even trying on sneakers at a Hoka store, generating mixed reactions from amazement to fear.
TIL Creatives People in Midtown, New York City (NYC), were left amazed and flabbergasted after the humanoid marched through Midtown. People in Midtown, New York City (NYC), were left amazed and flabbergasted after the humanoid marched through Midtown. While strolling on roads, the humanoid was seen grabbing hot dogs, trying on sneakers, and catching attention in a wild promo stunt. The KOID-branded bot, priced around $100,000, was rolled out last week by global asset management firm KraneShares to promote its Global Humanoid and Embodied Intelligence Index ETF, which launched in June after the bot rang the Nasdaq opening bell.KraneShares, a global asset management firm, introduced the KOID-branded bot in July 2025 for about $100,000. It was launched to promote their Global Humanoid and Embodied Intelligence Index ETF, which started in June, 2025 after the bot rang the Nasdaq opening bell.Joseph Dube, head of marketing at KraneShares, said, 'I feel like I was witnessing firsthand . . . the first lightbulb or the first car,' as quoted by the New York Post. 'People were amazed. Some people were terrified. It was a major mixed bag of reactions,' he added. During the stunt, the bot walked down Fifth Avenue, stopped for selfies, and strolled into a Hoka store, where surprised staff even helped it try on sneakers.Content creator Ben Sweeney set up the entire scene, filming for the @NewYorkers social account and chatting with people on the street. The videos went viral online, with some getting over 100,000 likes. 'To mess with humanity . . . y'all gotta stop. Satan, I rebuke you to hell,' one man on the street shouted, according to New York Post. 'How much am I getting paid, and how much is the robot getting paid?' another asked. 'It's going to happen,' a woman said when asked about a potential robot takeover.
A blind man called the tech 'wonderful,' noting it could help people who can't have guide dogs due to allergies or other limitations. 'I mean, I would love for it to clean my house,' another passerby said. KOID, developed by Chinese robotics company Unitree and distributed by RoboStore in Long Island, is powered by Stanford's OpenMind software.The bot was controlled remotely during its Fifth Avenue walk, but according to Dube, it's fully programmable and already in use in research labs and universities. Since launch, KraneShares says the ETF has drawn in $28 million. According to the NY Post, the Morgan Stanley Global Humanoid Model projects that there could be 1 billion humanoids and $5 trillion in annual revenue by 2050.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
3 hours ago
- Mint
This battery pioneer is worth $40 billion, but he's no ‘rich guy'
Next Story Rory Jones , Yang Jie , The Wall Street Journal CATL founder Robin Zeng represents a new type of tycoon flourishing in Xi Jinping's China. Robin Zeng, founder and chairman of CATL, in Shanghai in April. Gift this article With an estimated net worth of nearly $40 billion, Robin Zeng could definitely afford to buy a superyacht. The thing is, he doesn't want to. With an estimated net worth of nearly $40 billion, Robin Zeng could definitely afford to buy a superyacht. The thing is, he doesn't want to. The founder of the world's largest battery maker represents a new type of tycoon flourishing in Xi Jinping's China: He's understated, philanthropic and ready to echo official state talking points. 'People told me: 'Why don't you enjoy your life? You can buy a yacht,'" Zeng said on a video podcast hosted by Norway's sovereign-wealth fund, ahead of the Hong Kong listing in May of his company, CATL. 'I don't want to be the rich guy," Zeng said. 'I want to share these riches," he added, 'to try to create a good society." The listing raised $5.3 billion, making it the largest public offering in the world this year. CATL, known officially as Contemporary Amperex Technology, capitalized on rising demand from electric-vehicle makers like Tesla. Its batteries were installed in one out of every three EVs globally last year. Zeng emerged during a turbulent period in China when policymaking slowed the country's once-rapid growth but allowed a new set of magnates to get rich. Over the past decade, Xi has reined in the country's once freewheeling finance sector, curbed rampant property speculation and checked the power of tech executives such as Alibaba's Jack Ma. The Communist leader has also restructured the economy according to his own vision, focusing money and resources on industries that can buttress China against a hostile America. Zeng, 57 years old, has leveraged his tech know-how and the state's willingness to throw money at the renewable energy and electric-vehicle industries. Wang Chuanfu, the founder of carmaker BYD, and Lei Jun of Xiaomi, an electronics and EV maker, also profited from the government's focus on high-tech manufacturing. These billionaires are publicly aligned with Xi's vision for China, where ostentatious displays of wealth aren't tolerated and humility is the sentiment of the day. Zeng, Wang and Lei all took prominent seats when the leader summoned top executives in February for a pep talk. 'They've all learned that they have made it within the great scheme" and 'don't go around saying, 'This was all me,'" said Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun China Rich List, an annual ranking. Zeng declined to be interviewed. ''Refining yourself and enabling others' lies at the heart of CATL's values," the company said in a statement. CATL aims to empower 'communities, our hometown, regions across China, and ultimately, people around the world." Zeng, whose Chinese name is Zeng Yuqun, grew up in China's southeastern province of Fujian, near Ningde, where CATL is now based. His parents farmed a plot of land that barely fed the family, according to local media reports. He later studied naval architecture at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, graduating in 1989. The Communist Party at the time assigned some jobs, and Zeng was tasked with working at a state-owned factory in Fujian. After a couple of months, he moved to work for an electronics manufacturer in the southern boomtown of Dongguan and obtained a Ph.D. in physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Several years after he co-founded a lithium-ion battery company called Amperex Technology Ltd., Zeng began talks with Apple about creating a battery to fit the sleek iPod. Zeng became a supplier for the pioneering audio player, and ATL parlayed it into bigger jobs making batteries for iPhones and iPads. Zeng sold ATL to Japanese electronics manufacturer TDK in 2005 for $100 million but stuck around, setting up a division focused on car batteries. When Chinese regulators prohibited the division from supplying the Chinese market because it was owned by a foreign company, Zeng started the Chinese-owned company, CATL, in 2011. The timing was perfect. The government had begun prioritizing the development of electric vehicles, offering subsidies to manufacturers. Zeng celebrates at CATL's listing ceremony at the Hong Kong stock exchange in May. As with ATL, Zeng built the company's early reputation around a contract with a blue-chip Western brand, supplying EV batteries to a BMW joint venture in China. His big boost came in 2015 when Beijing told global automakers they would only qualify for subsidies if they used batteries from a list of approved Chinese suppliers, including CATL. In 2014, CATL's revenue was $1.2 billion. A year later, it jumped to $9 billion. Zeng amassed a $5.8 billion fortune following CATL's first listing in 2018, on the Shenzhen stock exchange. He has a nearly one-quarter stake in the company, which has a market value of more than $160 billion. By 2020, CATL began supplying Elon Musk's Tesla factory in China, cementing its position as the market leader. With customers around the world, Zeng regularly works until around midnight, he told the Norwegian podcast 'In Good Company." The always-on schedule means he likes a nap around 1 p.m. to recharge, Zeng said. He has given some of his wealth to a children's charity, he added, and placed factories in rural China to ensure workers can live close to their families. He is driven by the values of Confucius, the ancient Chinese sage, Zeng has said in other interviews. He encourages people to read the philosopher's book of sayings, known in English as 'The Analects," which emphasize lifelong learning and continuous moral improvement. Earlier in his career, Zeng was photographed with the words written in calligraphy, 'Strong Gambling Nature," illustrating his willingness to make big bets. He more recently has been pictured in his office alongside a phrase from a Confucius classic: 'Profound and Extensive Like a Deep Spring," describing the wisdom of a sage. China's billionaire class took off after changes in the 1990s spurred private-sector entrepreneurship. Not all stayed on the right side of the Communist Party. One of the first private-sector billionaires, Huang Guangyu, was convicted of corruption in 2010 and spent more than a decade in prison. At least three other former holders of the title of China's richest man had serious run-ins with Chinese leadership, said Hoogewerf. Zeng's customers have acknowledged his power over the EV battery industry. 'We all have to make money for him," Li Bin, the founder of NIO, a Chinese EV startup, said at a Beijing auto show last year. Li's firm, like many Chinese EV makers, is losing money, while CATL made $7 billion in profit last year. Zeng replied, 'We're just making bricks." Zeng has begun positioning his company as more than just a battery maker for cars. He wants batteries in trucks, trains and aircraft, and believes entire cities and countries can be powered with renewable energy backed by battery storage. The Chinese EV market faces a price war and oversupply. U.S. scrutiny of CATL is intensifying amid national-security concerns, with the Pentagon alleging military ties and lawmakers subpoenaing U.S. banks over CATL's Hong Kong listing. CATL said it isn't involved in any military-related business, and the banks said they are cooperating. The issues haven't lessened investor appetite. CATL's share price in Hong Kong is up more 50% since the listing, outpacing its shares in mainland China, a market viewed as less accessible to global investors. But entrepreneurs like Zeng remain at the whim of Xi, according to Desmond Shum, who wrote a book about getting rich via connections with Communist Party officials. 'If you don't understand this, you'll be the first one to be slaughtered," he said in an interview. Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News , Corporate news , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
Hindustan Times
4 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India
SRIPERUMBUDUR, India—Dozens of women wearing ID badges streamed from their rooms in a year-old dormitory for Foxconn workers and headed to a company cafeteria on a recent day for a menu of lentil-and-vegetable stew, beetroot and rice. White buses waited outside to ferry them to a factory where the Apple contractor builds iPhones. Women working on assembly lines in India form the backbone of a strategy Apple chief executive Tim Cook set in motion years ago. He first looked to boost Apple's position in India's growing smartphone market after sales in China slowed. Those early steps now leave Apple well-positioned for the intensifying trade rivalry between the U.S. and China. A year after a 2016 meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Tim Cook, the company began assembling iPhones in India on a relatively small scale. Apple next pushed suppliers to develop India as an alternative manufacturing hub when President Trump in his first term threatened tariffs on Chinese-made iPhones and, later, when the pandemic slowed iPhone production in China. The company saw India as the only country outside of China that could assemble iPhones at adequate scale and competitive cost. India's iPhone production capacity is expected to more than double when two new production centers gear up in the next two years. That will allow Apple to increasingly rely on India, instead of China, to supply iPhones to the U.S. Cook said last week that most iPhones sold in the U.S. came from India during the April-to-June quarter. He didn't elaborate on Apple's long-term plans for supplying the U.S. The company, which declined to comment, reported iPhone revenue in the last fiscal year at $201 billion. For years, Apple's iPhone gold mine depended largely on Chinese manufacturing and sales. The creation of China's iPhone supply chain over the span of two decades is widely seen as Cook's greatest business achievement. It helped the company wring trillions of dollars of value from its most popular device. Yet Apple's lucrative position in, and its dependence on, the authoritarian nation—America's most pressing economic and geopolitical rival—has become the company's Achilles' heel. On Wednesday, Cook's skill at navigating treacherous trade waters surfaced at the Oval Office, where Trump announced that Apple and other companies making domestic investments would be exempt from new global tariffs. Cook, who stood alongside the president, pledged a company investment of $100 billion in the U.S. Apple's commitment falls short of Trump's prior demand that it make iPhones in the U.S. Yet it proved enough to afford protection for now. Apple investors showed their appreciation Wednesday, driving up its market capitalization more than $200 billion. Cook's India strategy had looked increasingly risky after Trump publicly criticized it and then announced steep tariffs on the country. The result of the president's announcement appears to be that Apple will continue to pay a 20% tariff on iPhones imported from China and none on ones from India. Over the past nine years, India went from producing zero iPhones to as much as 14% of Apple's worldwide total, according to estimates provided by Abhilash Kumar, a senior analyst at TechInsights. The technology analysis firm expects that share to double in 2025. Traffic passing an industrial park in Sriperumbudur, India, where Foxconn operates an iPhone assembly plant. Even so, India will need to up its game to catch China. When Apple unveiled the first iPhone in 2007, China already had a dense ecosystem of manufacturing supply chains, talent and infrastructure. In less than a decade after the iPhone's release, China was building more than 200 million of them a year. In India, Apple faces a snarl of government regulations, spotty infrastructure and inexperience with precision manufacturing of complex components that go inside iPhones. China, which still accounts for about 80% of all iPhones assembled, has applied pressure behind the scenes on suppliers to slow Cook's plans. India has seen reductions in the number of Chinese training personnel, as well as delays in machinery shipments, according to people familiar with the matter. Suppliers indicate they are navigating those hurdles, these people said. Apple continues to diversify its supply chain, such as making metal smartphone frames in Vietnam, camera components in Malaysia as well as some of its more basic iPhone chips in the U.S. In the race for iPhone proficiency, India has shown a unity of purpose rare for its fractious political system. It has a better educated, tech-savvy workforce compared with a decade ago. 'We think the ecosystem is developing well,' said Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's minister for electronics, information and technology. India's iPhone exports reached more than $17 billion for the 12 months that ended in March, he said. Help wanted Parts of India are starting to mirror the productivity of Zhengzhou, China's so-called iPhone City, where hundreds of thousands of workers make the devices. At the Foxconn plant in Sriperumbudur, around 40,000 workers, more than 80% of them women, work in three eight-hour shifts. For entry-level assembly workers, monthly earnings start at around $200 a month, lower than in China. Entry-level workers there can earn $700 to $1,000 a month for the same job and sometimes more during periods of higher demand. Employees working on an assembly line at a mobile-phone plant in Sriperumbudur operated by a unit of Foxconn. After the completion of two new production centers, the iPhone manufacturing hubs in India's south are slated to employ some 150,000 workers screwing together Apple's most ubiquitous device. The expansion predates Trump's second-term tariffs by years. 'The ramping up is the result of fairly long-term planning,' said Arun Roy, secretary of industry in the Tamil Nadu government. 'It's not a sudden decision they have taken.' India has upgraded its infrastructure and unveiled a program of manufacturing subsidies that have successfully promoted smartphone manufacturing. States offered their own inducements to draw Apple suppliers and other tech manufacturers. In an industrial park in southern India, 13 newly painted gray-and-white 10-story dormitory buildings are part of a 20-acre neighborhood built by the Tamil Nadu government to house iPhone workers. More than 6,500 people live there, and there is room for 12,000 more. An 18-year-old woman eating lunch at the dorm traveled nearly 1,000 miles from rural eastern India for an assembly line job. 'I looked on Google,' she said. The high-school graduate started work this year for Foxconn, the Taiwanese firm that is one of Apple's biggest manufacturing suppliers. Women boarding buses headed to the facility where Foxconn builds iPhones in Sriperumbudur, India. The cafeteria during lunch hour at the women's dormitory complex for workers in Sriperumbudur, India. When Foxconn's chairman Young Liu came to India last August, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented him a bouquet of roses before the two men discussed Foxconn's future investment plans. In Tamil Nadu, state industries minister T.R.B. Rajaa picked up Liu from the airport, draped a silk scarf around his neck, a mark of respect, and drove him to the site of the new dormitory. On the trip, he pitched investment ideas, including new factories to make smartphone components that are now imported. 'It's a good thing to make that every second count, right?' the minister said. Tamil Nadu is acquiring land for an airport near the Foxconn facilities for passenger and cargo flights. Elsewhere in the state, Indian conglomerate Tata Group, which has taken control of two smaller Taiwanese suppliers with Apple's blessing, is building its own factory to assemble iPhones, making it the firm's first domestic supplier. The company also is building worker housing. In the neighboring state of Karnataka, Foxconn is investing $2.5 billion in new manufacturing on 300 acres. A state official previously said that more than half the company's investment would go toward a new iPhone assembly facility. The overall development qualifies Foxconn for an $800 million incentive payment, a state official said. Foxconn and Tata declined to comment. Playing catch-up Technology analysts say India has made strides in final assembly, the lowest-value piece of iPhone production. What comes next—making the precision components inside iPhones, such as cameras—will be more difficult to master. China-headquartered firms maintain a dominant share of precision manufacturing, according to an examination of Apple supplier disclosures from Tufts University professor Chris Miller and Vishnu Venugopalan, who previously headed Tamil Nadu's investment promotion agency. Of Apple's 187 top suppliers, more than 150 of them have facilities in China, compared with 14 in India, as of fiscal year 2023. Chinese workers at a Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China. 'China is about 20 years ahead of the U.S. and India in terms of the scale, volume, or infrastructure they can churn out for Apple or any high-tech company,' said Navkendar Singh, analyst at tech researcher IDC Asia/Pacific. Apple and its suppliers in India require new infrastructure, new workforce training and policy support to reach the level of industrial coordination China achieved over past decades. Most smartphone components are imported to India and many face tariffs. Manufacturers in India are allowed to bypass the tariffs if the parts they import are for phones that will be exported. Some supply chain experts say India might find it tough to match the production-friendly policies of China's authoritarian system. Chinese officials helped facilitate the transport of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers for temporary work during critical periods of Apple's production calendar. Work shifts can stretch to 12 hours during peak demand. The women's dormitory complex for Foxconn factory workers in Sriperumbudur, India. A store inside the women's dorm. An effort in Tamil Nadu to allow 12-hour shifts was dropped after Indian labor activists and workers complained. In the first years after Apple's Taiwanese suppliers moved to India, the firms were hit by labor unrest, often over food and accommodations. In one instance, hundreds of workers fell ill with food poisoning and staged a mass protest, drawing headlines worldwide. Foxconn has hired mostly female factory workers in India, which is uncommon in many parts of the country where women seldom work outside the home. The new dorm for Foxconn workers, where women sleep six to a room, has rules similar to those at university hostels—no men on the premises, for one—intended to reassure parents in the socially conservative country. The dorms have a grocery and a clothing store, as well as ping-pong tables and badminton courts. Workers can order birthday cakes at a ground-floor bakery. New confidence When Apple began manufacturing iPhones in India, its smartphones had higher rejection rates compared with China's. Foxconn's chairman last year said India's rates were nearly on par. India has started making the iPhone Pros, the higher-end models that make up a large share of U.S. demand. 'That shows a certain amount of confidence,' said Singh, of IDC. Translating a new iPhone blueprint into a system for tens of thousands of workers to follow is a task that still largely takes place in China. Apple is experimenting with doing part of that work in India for the base model of the iPhone 17, said people familiar with the matter. Indian officials believe a significant increase in the number of iPhones produced in the next year or two will make it more practical for some foreign suppliers to consider setting up shop in India. They are studying Apple's supply chain to see which firms would benefit from local operations. A worker walking through a corridor in the women's dorm complex. In March, India announced manufacturing subsidies of $2.7 billion for smartphone and other electronic components, including machinery. A month later, Tamil Nadu announced matching grants. In May, Foxconn said it was investing $1.5 billion in a new plant, which, according to a person familiar with the matter, will employ around 14,000 workers in Tamil Nadu. Apple might be able to reproduce key components of its Chinese supply chain in India in as little as five years, said Kevin O'Marah, founder of supply chain research firm Zero100. 'It's not the next China. Nothing is the next China,' O'Marah said. 'But it will be a meaningful production center for Apple and other device-makers.' Write to Tripti Lahiri at Yang Jie at and Rolfe Winkler at Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India Apple Got the Jump on Tariffs, Deciding Years Ago to Make iPhones in India
The Hindu
5 hours ago
- The Hindu
‘Sangarsha Ghadana' movie review: Krishand's rumination on the futility of war brims with quiet inventiveness
The anticipation of violence is as mind-numbing as violence itself — the expectation that someone who has taken a hit will retaliate, with several ways to do so. In Sangarsha Ghadana - The Art of Warfare, which begins with a violent hit by one gang on another, filmmaker Krishand prolongs this anticipation to upset the audience's expectations of what would transpire during that period. Kodamazha Suni (Sanup Padaveedan), a former gangster who has moved on and is now living a respectable life, has just lost four of his trusted lieutenants in a brutal attack by an unknown gang led by Kunjan (Vishnu Agasthya). One would expect the man to be plotting his revenge, especially when he sits with the other members of his former gang. The comical policemen tailing him also probably expected the same. But go closer, and the conversations are about a pepper drink and special masala dosa that Suni would like to have before leaving the city. This sequence is representative of the brand of delicious, understated humour that Sangarsha Ghadana, just like in Krishand's previous films, is filled with. In another scene, a gang member admonishes a cook who adds Ajinomoto in a dish — 'There are people out there to kill us. You don't need to'. At the heart of the film lies Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu's ancient work 'The Art of War', which has inspired many political and military leaders over the centuries. But Krishand, while seemingly applying the strategies in the book to the local gang war, is also questioning the futility of the endless cycles of violence. Sangarsha Ghadana- The Art of Warfare (Malayalam) Director: Kirshand Cast: Vishnu Agasthya, Sanup Padaveedan, Mrudula Murali, Zhinz Shan, Rahul Rajagopal Runtime: 107 minutes Storyline: Four of a retired gangster's trusted lieutenants are eliminated by an unknown gang, leading to a hunt for the suspects and an anticipation for revenge Along with lessons from the military treatise, he juxtaposes the episodes in the violent gang war with references to actual wars and the toll they have taken on humanity — the unvanquished Alexander's invasions, the Napoleonic wars, the world wars, the war in Syria and the ongoing brutal occupation of Israel in Palestine, all play along with this relatively minor gang war in a corner of Kerala. But the underlying emotions, as well as motivations and overt actions and reactions, are very much universal, a point which Krishand doesn't attempt to drill into our heads but let it seep in ever so slowly. Actors like Zhinz Shan and Rahul Rajagopal, who have featured in Krishand's past films, feature in key roles, but it is Vishnu Agasthya who steals the scene. Filmmaker Manoj Kana also has some memorable moments as a police officer interrogating the gangsters. The police procedural almost ends up as a self-aware spoof of many recent police stories. The distinct visual and narrative style, which was evident in Krishand's previous works like Aavasavyuhamand Purusha Pretham, is very much on view here, with a few nods to masters like Wong Kar-Wai. It is by no means a repetition, but a signature, of a filmmaker who has an original voice and ideas that are not derivative. With Sangarsha Ghadana, Krishand takes a less trodden path to deliver a philosophical rumination on the futility of war. Sangarsha Ghadana is currently running in theatres
