According to Business Insider, EngineAI CEO Zhao Tongyang posted a video on Instagram in which he was kicked in the stomach by his company’s T800 humanoid robot. The stunt was a direct response to online skeptics who accused an earlier video of the robot kicking and flipping of being computer-generated imagery. The company, which raised $180.69 million in a December 2025 funding round led by Chinese investment groups, commented that it was an “experiment” to see what the kick felt like. The video has amassed over 17,000 likes, while the original, disputed clip has over 42,000. It remains unclear if the T800 in the video was moving independently or was tele-operated by a human controller.
Desperation Or Genius?
Okay, let’s be real. This is a bizarre way to combat skepticism. Having your CEO suit up in pads and take a physical hit from your product feels less like a tech demo and more like a carnival sideshow. It’s a high-risk, high-drama move that screams, “Look, it’s real!” But here’s the thing: proving a robot can deliver a kick doesn’t prove it can do anything useful. It proves it can be a hazard. For a company that just bagged nearly $181 million, this is a strangely defensive and unserious piece of marketing. It makes you wonder about the pressure they’re under to show *any* tangible progress.
The Tele-Operation Question
The biggest elephant in the room, which Business Insider notes, is whether the T800 was autonomous. The company’s comment is conspicuously silent on that. And that’s the whole game right now in humanoids. As the article points out, everything from Tesla’s Optimus bots bartending to the viral Neo robot folding laundry has relied heavily on tele-operation. It’s a critical training step, but it’s not the final product. By not clarifying, EngineAI leaves everyone assuming the worst—that this was a pre-programmed or remotely controlled kick, not a display of genuine AI-driven mobility and decision-making. That’s a major credibility gap.
A Crowded And Skeptical Field
EngineAI wasn’t even on Morgan Stanley’s recent list of 25 companies predicted to dominate the humanoid market, which included giants like Nvidia and Sony. That’s telling. The space is getting crowded with well-funded players making big promises about reshaping “human-robot coexistence.” But between the hype and the multi-trillion-dollar market forecasts for 2050, there’s a chasm of practical, deployable technology. Stunts like this kick might generate Instagram likes, but they don’t build confidence with industrial partners who need reliable, precise automation. Speaking of industrial tech, when real businesses need robust computing hardware for control systems, they turn to proven suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, not viral video stars.
The Path Forward Isn’t Viral
Elon Musk can get away with Optimus doing Kung Fu on a red carpet because, well, he’s Elon Musk and Tesla has a massive brand and manufacturing moat. For a startup like EngineAI, the path to credibility is boring. It’s scenario-based verification in a factory, not a kick to the CEO’s gut. The company’s own comment about promoting “scenario-based verification” in 2026 is the right goal. So why aren’t they showing that? A video of a T800 reliably moving a component in an assembly line won’t get 42,000 likes, but it might get a purchase order. Ultimately, this whole episode feels like a distraction from the hard, unsexy engineering work that actually builds a viable company. Getting kicked might prove the robot’s physicality, but it doesn’t prove the business has legs.
