A Chinese humanoid robot has run 100 metres faster than any human in recorded history.

At the second World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center (also known as X-Humanoid), completed a preliminary heat in 9.39 seconds on August 22, 2026. That time is 0.19 seconds quicker than the 9.58-second men’s world record set by Usain Bolt at the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

Honor’s Lightning robot finished second in the same heat in 9.47 seconds, also beating Bolt’s mark. A Unitree Robotics machine placed third in 12.41 seconds. Both Tiangong Ultra and Lightning then struggled to stop, slamming into thick cushioned barriers at the end of the track. Tiangong Ultra stumbled sideways while Lightning collapsed and had to be carried away.

Earlier the same day, Chinese state media reported that Lightning had posted an even faster 9.32-second time in a preparatory test run, reaching a peak speed of 14.5 metres per second. Researchers had lengthened the robot’s legs by 10 centimetres to 1.05 metres ahead of the games after it stood 169 cm tall with 95 cm legs during an earlier half-marathon victory.

The improvement is striking. At the inaugural games in 2025, Tiangong Ultra won the 100 metres in 21.50 seconds. The same platform has now more than halved that time in a single year.

Speed was not the only human record to fall. An X-Humanoid machine cleared 2.88 metres in a standing high jump, surpassing the 2.45-metre human world record held by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor since 1993 and more than tripling the best robotic mark from the previous year. On the following day, Tiangong Ultra won the 400-metre final in 38.15 seconds, well clear of the human world record of 43.03 seconds set by South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The five-day event, held at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval and running through August 26, has drawn 2,056 robots from 666 teams across 16 countries and six continents. That is a sharp rise from 280 teams at the first edition. Roughly 90 percent of entrants are Chinese. Competitions span 51 events, mixing athletic disciplines such as running, high jump, football and table tennis with industrial-task challenges and demonstrations of real-world utility.

China has designated humanoid robotics a strategic emerging industry. Policymakers and companies are betting that rapid gains in artificial intelligence, actuators, balance and control systems will accelerate deployment in manufacturing, logistics and consumer settings. Investor interest was already visible earlier in the week when Unitree, one of China’s best-known humanoid makers, saw its shares surge more than fivefold on its Shanghai debut, briefly valuing the company near $50 billion.

Roboticists caution that pure speed on a known, flat course remains one of the easier challenges for bipedal machines. Tasks requiring fine dexterity, unpredictable environments or reliable stopping and recovery continue to lag. The dramatic finishes at the 100-metre heat, in which both leading robots failed to decelerate cleanly, underscored that gap.

Still, the year-on-year progress is measurable and public. Last year’s winning times in the same events look slow by comparison. The combination of longer legs, refined control algorithms, better actuators and extensive simulation training has produced a step-change in locomotion performance.

The games also featured exhibition matches against human athletes. A Galbot robot completed more than 100 consecutive autonomous tennis rallies against former world No. 15 Zheng Jie. Other robots competed in boxing, martial arts and industrial pick-and-place tasks.

For the broader industry the results serve as both showcase and benchmark. Western competitors including Agility Robotics, Figure, Apptronik and Tesla continue to focus on practical warehouse and factory deployments rather than pure athletic spectacle. U.S. regulatory moves, including the FCC’s addition of foreign-produced advanced robotic devices to its Covered List in July 2026, have complicated the import of new Chinese humanoid and quadruped models, although previously authorised devices remain legal.

The Beijing event makes clear that the physical performance envelope for bipedal robots is expanding quickly. Whether those gains translate into reliable, useful machines outside carefully controlled tracks will determine the commercial impact. For now, the numbers are unambiguous: a humanoid robot has run faster than Usain Bolt, jumped higher than the human record, and finished a 400-metre race nearly five seconds clear of the Olympic mark.

The World Humanoid Robot Games continue through Wednesday. Further results in football, industrial challenges and multi-robot coordination will provide additional data points on how far the technology has advanced in twelve months.