The Download

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Hector Retamal / Getty Images

TL;DR: If you’ve seen those backflipping, fast-running robots that stand about 4 feet tall all over your feed, there’s a good chance they were made by Chinese company Unitree. This week, it pulled off an eye-popping IPO in China and unveiled a new humanoid that could probably try out for an Olympic track team. Its success also raises a big question: Does the US stand a chance to catch up in the robotics race?

The big jump: We hope you’re having a week half as good as Unitree’s. First, on Monday, the company showed off its new “Superman” robot, which it says can clear a standing jump of over 6.5 feet and clock a top running speed faster than Usain Bolt’s. Unitree says it developed Superman in just over three months, a breakneck speed for robotics and a sign of how strong China’s capabilities have become.

Then, on Wednesday, Unitree’s shares rose 460% as the company debuted on Shanghai’s stock exchange, valuing the company at about $50 billion.

A marketing machine: Unitree’s sudden mainstream visibility may feel new, but millions of people already know its robots by other names. Take Edward Warchocki of Poland, a very chatty robot that once chased away a pack of wild boars and has over 1 million social media followers. Or Brickell Clanker, who resides in Miami and joined in on the World Cup celebrations this summer. Then there’s Rizzbot, the Austin-ite who wears a cowboy hat and flirts with people on the street. All these bots run on the same Unitree G1 hardware.

Bot block: But just as Unitree’s brand recognition grows in the US, Washington is moving to keep new foreign-made bots out. At the end of July, the FCC announced a ban on new foreign-made “advanced robotic devices” being sold in the US—a restriction that applies to humanoids, quadrupeds (those freaky robot dogs), and even your next Roomba.

These bots were blacklisted over national security concerns (robots can collect data about their surroundings, which is why you may not want them made by a foreign rival) and to prevent near-total reliance on China’s robot production. Chinese companies shipped 90% of the world’s humanoids last year.

American firms are split: Domestic robot makers say the new regulation is protection for their industry, while the startups and researchers who use robots in their work say they need access to inexpensive Chinese hardware or risk falling behind.

Bottom line: The US probably can’t close the robotics gap through restrictions alone. Meanwhile, China’s got a clear edge in making cheap hardware, iterating on it quickly, and shipping it globally. —WK

      

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A Whoop-ing amount of data

Disclosure: Companies may send us products to test, but they never pay for our opinions. Our recommendations are unbiased and unfiltered, and Tech Brew may earn a commission if you buy through our links.

I am, by any measure, chronically bad at charging my devices. As an Apple Watch user, this bad habit has produced the same small tragedy multiple times: I’m dressed and ready to go, but my watch is dead. So the Whoop 5.0 wearable, with its 14-day battery life, had my attention before I even put it on.

How we tested it: For two weeks, I wore it everywhere—on flights, at my desk, to sleep, and during workouts—except the shower. (Even though it’s waterproof, the feeling of the wet strap was too much of a sensory overload for me.) I logged my habits every day on the Whoop app (on a Peak subscription), including whether I had an afternoon snack, if I spent time outdoors, and how much caffeine I consumed.

The Good: The battery life is, as promised, one of the best parts of the band. One charge did last about 14 days, and the design of the slide-on battery pack meant that I could just slip it on and charge it without having to take the band off.

The data (warning: there’s a lot of it) became more tailored to my everyday life the more consistently I wore it. The metric I found to be most useful was the recovery score, which gave me a good idea of how much I should exert myself for the day by tracking my sleep performance and combining it with other factors like the previous day’s stress levels.

The Bad: The band is inseparable from the annual membership, and it’s not cheap. The price for its cheapest One tier is $199 per year. Its Peak tier is $239 per year, and its most expensive Life tier is $359 per year. That’s a significant recurring annual cost (for comparison, the one-time cost of the Apple Watch Series 11 starts at $399). If you decide to stop paying for the Whoop membership, your hardware is rendered useless.

Verdict: ✅ Signal—for people who want the data and can justify the subscription. —LC

The Zeitbyte

Keyboard warriors

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Unsplash

For most people, Microsoft Excel is an unglamorous work tool for routine data entry. But for an elite few, it’s a canvas on which to show off the peak of human achievement: completing grueling spreadsheet “obstacle courses” with the dexterity of a concert pianist and the cold calculation of a chess grandmaster.

These challenges require players to strip and rearrange cells using only keyboard shortcuts, with speedrunners honing the optimal path to finish a gauntlet in record time. Meanwhile, an annual Excel World Championship tests competitors’ ability to solve complex spreadsheet problems in a 40-minute elimination match. (Last year’s winner is called the “LeBron James of spreadsheets.”) Other masters of the field focus less on speed and more on ingenuity—building intricate animations (like this first-person view of a roller coaster ride) or artful landscape paintings using nothing but the Microsoft software.

Excel influencers have racked up hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, posting their achievements and teaching their skills to a rapt audience. To be an Excel virtuoso is to pursue a never-ending quest for perfection: fewer keystrokes, cleaner formulas, and, perhaps one day, the most beautiful pivot table of all time. —WK

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• OpenAI is testing “Private Safety Processing,” a service that’s meant to counter Anthropic’s recently announced controversial data-retention policy.
• Amazon drone deliveries are dropping packages into pools now.
• Google Search rolled out new AI features focused on learning, including interactive animations and customized quizzes.
• These are the 10 new products Apple is expected to launch this fall (yes, we’re talking about those AirPods with a camera).
• A very 2026 headline: “Everyone’s Using This AI Dictation App That I Want to Murder With a Hammer.”
• Some coders say they’ve already found a way around Anthropic’s AI text watermark.

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