The stores opened on September 1 in Hung Hom, Wan Chai and Kai Tak and operate 24 hours a day. Customers place orders through a screen before Galbot’s G1 wheeled humanoid, known locally as Xiao Gai, retrieves the selected products and hands them over.
G1 stands around 173 cm tall and can interact with customers in Mandarin, Cantonese and English. Galbot’s retail system is powered by its AstraBrain embodied intelligence stack, which the company uses for perception, manipulation and task execution.
The Hong Kong deployment is notable because Galbot is moving a robot application that already has meaningful domestic scale into a new market. The company says it has deployed the store format across about 200 locations in nearly 50 mainland Chinese cities and plans roughly 10 additional Hong Kong stores over time.
The level of autonomy still needs some qualification. Galbot and launch organizers describe the stores as fully autonomous, but independent reporting from the South China Morning Post found that human attendants are still required for certain operations, including some restocking tasks. The first day also saw internet connectivity problems at some locations.
Reuters visited the stores on September 5 and reported customers actively interacting with the robots, while also noting complaints around response speed and handling unexpected situations.
The Hong Kong rollout is Galbot’s first retail deployment outside mainland China and gives the company a live test of whether its embodied AI system can operate across different languages, payment systems and consumer environments.
