China robotics company Unitree Robotics has launched a new humanoid model at a starting price of just under $6,000, underlining the Asian country's ambition to stay at the forefront of the robotics race that could send jitters across the US.

Unitree's new humanoid model R1 weighs about 25 kilogram and has 26 joints, per media reports citing the company's post on its RedNote account.

R1 uses a multimodal large language model integrating speech and image modalities.

Notably, R1's starting price is much lower than Unitree's G1 model that was launched last year at a starting price of 99,000 yuan.

The R1's launch comes after Unitree raised its Series C funding last month from Chinese auto maker Geely Automobile, fintech giant Ant Group and investment firm HongShan Capital Group (formerly known as Sequoia Capital China) at a $1.7 billion valuation.

Earlier this year, the startup came into the limelight after its CEO Wang Xingxing joined big names like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Jack Ma and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s Pony Ma at a widely publicized summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Unitree has also started preparing for an initial public offering (IPO).

The launch and the pricing of R1 is expected to intensify the AI and robotics battle between the US and China.

In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk had remarked that in respect to humanoid robots, he didn't think there’s any company in any country that can match Tesla, which had launched its Optimus humanoid robot in 2022.

However, he had added, "I’m a little concerned that on the leaderboard, ranks two through 10 will be Chinese companies, but I’m confident rank one will be Tesla."