HONOR

A Shenzhen phone maker that has bet on robotics since 2025, with its self-developed humanoid “Lightning” winning a half marathon.

HONOR was founded in 2013 as a phone sub-brand under Huawei, becoming independent in November 2020, and is headquartered in Shenzhen. In March 2025 it announced its “Alpha Strategy,” pledging $10 billion over five years to transform into an AI-device ecosystem company, with robotics as one pillar; that April it formed a New Industry Incubation department covering labs for embodied AI, embodied data, powertrains, and bionic robot bodies. On March 1, 2026, at Mobile World Congress it showed a “robot phone” with a mechanical gimbal and unveiled its first self-developed humanoid robot; on April 19, its self-developed humanoid “Lightning” won the Beijing E-Town Humanoid Robot Half Marathon in 50 minutes 26 seconds, with HONOR's three entries sweeping the top three places. The company is pursuing an A-share listing, completing listing-counseling registration in June 2025.

ExampleAt the E-Town half marathon, “Lightning” ran the roughly 21-kilometer course in fully autonomous navigation mode, finishing in a net time of 50 minutes 26 seconds — faster than the human men's half-marathon world record at the time, 57 minutes 20 seconds, set by Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo in Lisbon in March 2026.

Also called

Honor Device

Related

Honor Lightning Humanoid Robot · Humanoid Robot Half Marathon (Beijing E-Town) · World Humanoid Robot Games · Joint Actuator Module · Liquid-Cooled Joint Actuators (Active Thermal Management)

Sources

荣耀手机公司入局人形机器人，百万年薪抢人（36氪） (Chinese)
HONOR Advances Its AI Vision at MWC 2026 with Robot Phone, Humanoid Robot
荣耀机器人包揽亦庄「半马」前三名（北京日报，2026-04） (Chinese)
Ratified: world records for Kiplimo, Tharp and Wanyonyi（World Athletics，2026-09-03）

As of

2026-07