Dexterous hands
Multi-finger hands (6-22+ active DOF), often with tactile sensing, sold as standalone components or built in-house.
Data updated
Why it matters
Hands combine many small motors, tendons or linkages, reducers and tactile sensors. Western leaders (Tesla, Figure, Boston Dynamics) mostly design their own. Chinese specialists such as LinkerBot and Inspire sell hands as off-the-shelf components.
Why it is a bottleneck. Hands are among the hardest parts to make reliable at volume. Tesla's hand/forearm has 100+ small parts and is a main bottleneck for Optimus. Chinese firms shipped 96% of hands with 6+ active DOF in H1 2026 (SAG).
Cost. BofA 2030 BOM: dexterous hands ~19%.
Suppliers 7
- Inspire RobotsRH56 series dexterous hands
- LinkerBotDexterous hands from ~$600
- PaXini TechITPU multimodal tactile sensors; DexH13 dexterous hand (1,140 sensing units)
- Robot Era (XHAND)XHAND dexterous hand
- Shadow Robot CompanyShadow Dexterous Hand (24 joints, 20 actuated DOF); DEX-EE
- mimicM1 15-DOF tendon-driven hand; U1 data-collection wearable
Sources for this category
- China leads dexterous hand supply for humanoids (TechTarget) (Sep 24, 2026)
- Tesla ramps Optimus to hundreds a week, but the robots can't generalize (Electrek) (Sep 25, 2026)
- Tesla to produce over 1,000 Optimus robots a week, but hand troubles keep most in testing (The Cool Down) (Oct 2, 2026)
- The $6 billion Chinese startup trying to build hands for every robot (WIRED) (May 28, 2026)
- Physical AI, part 2: Humanoid robots (Bank of America Institute) (Mar 12, 2026)
- Embodied-AI startup PaXini raises RMB1 billion (TechNode) (Aug 4, 2026)
- China robotic hands maker Linkerbot targets $7.6 billion valuation (Reuters via The Straits Times; S$7.6B = US$6B) (May 4, 2026)
- Seeds | Robot Era Secures Another 1 Billion Yuan in Funding (Gasgoo) (Jul 6, 2026)
- PaXini completes multi-hundred-million RMB B++ round; cumulative funding exceeds RMB 4B (Eastmoney / Cailian Press) (Sep 16, 2026)
- Sharpa unveils D01 robot, W02 dexterous hand and AE01 data glove at IROS 2026 (PR Newswire) (Sep 28, 2026)