Professor Zhang Zhiqian revealed a plan for a Pregnancy Robot in 2026. He has developing pregnancy robots for over 2 years after establishing a corporation in Hong Kong. I don’t believe this has been done. He cites work for premature babies and premature animals. The ethical path to an artificial womb and pregnancy robot would be to prove this works very reliably for animals first and then move on to super-premature humans. Those would be viable multi-billion markets. Proving this works thousands of times for animals would give the confidence and experience needed for human trials.
Dr. Zhang expects that the prototype of the pregnancy robot he is researching will be available within a year, with a price set below 100,000 yuan.
According to Zhang, the artificial womb has already achieved significant results in animal experiments. He cites the 2017 Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia successfully allowed a premature lamb, equating to 23 weeks of pregnancy in humans, to grow in an artificial womb known as the biobag. This was just for premature animals and NOT for carrying from fertilization to a mature baby.
The biobag, made of transparent vinyl material, was filled with warm water and salt to create artificial amniotic fluid, with nutrients supplied to the lamb through a tube connected to the umbilical cord. As a result, the lamb grew wool four weeks later.
However, this artificial womb functions more like an incubator, allowing early-born individuals to grow in an environment similar to the womb. For Dr. Zhang’s vision to be realized, it needs to advance to enable actual pregnancy within the artificial womb. In this interview, Dr. Zhang did not provide specifics on how the eggs and sperm are fertilized and implanted in the artificial womb.
Artificial womb technology, often referred to as ectogenesis or the artificial uterus, aims to support fetal development outside the human body. There has been partial ectogenesis (sustaining premature fetuses). Complete ectogenesis (gestation from conception to birth) is still theoretical. Advanced incubators, on the other hand, are specialized devices for premature newborns, evolving from basic environmental control systems to more sophisticated setups that mimic womb-like conditions.
Research has focused on partial ectogenesis for extremely premature infants (22-28 weeks gestation), where survival rates are low (around 50-70% with current NICU care, often with disabilities). Full ectogenesis remains speculative, with no animal or human proof of sustaining development from fertilization to birth.
Artificial Womb Advancements are being made. EXTEND System (USA) is building on the 2017 biobag. They have a pumpless, oxygenator-based system has been refined for lambs and fetal pigs. In 2024, it demonstrated improved hemodynamics and organ maturation. Human trials are under FDA consideration, potentially starting by 2026-2027 for super-premature cases.
Success in lambs, pigs, and mice shows viability for mid-gestation support, but there has been no full-term ectogenesis. For instance, a 2025 review noted sustained growth in lambs equivalent to human 13-38 weeks, but only as an incubator-like extension.
Creating a stable environment for super-premature fetuses requires precise control of oxygenation, nutrition, and infection prevention. Current systems work for mid-gestation but struggle with earlier stages or full-term support.
There is work on hybrid systems blending traditional incubators with womb-like features (e.g., fluid environments, AI monitoring) to potentially extend viability earlier. The global market is valued at approximately USD 1.5-2.2 billion in 2025, projected to reach USD 3-3.5 billion by 2034 at a CAGR of 5-7%. This growth is driven by rising premature births (~10-15% globally) and innovations in thermoregulation and oxygenation.
If viability were extended to 12 weeks, the market could surge by an additional billions due to saved lives and reduced long-term disabilities, though regulatory hurdles delay this.
The bigger market is for perfecting and increasing survival of human fertalized eggs through to viable embryos. This is still at 30-50%.
Early stages leverage IVF tech, bridging to full ectogenesis requires overcoming implantation and immunological barriers.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Too little, too late for China. Even if this guy produced 250 million of them and they all had kids back-to-back-to-back, China’s still going to eat two lost decades as it swallows its baby boom and ensuing bust.
Are there any studies on how reddish light passing through the mother’s belly affects a baby cognitive development?
(“the amount of light that penetrates the abdominal wall is relatively low, similar to an overcast night or a full moon, according to cosmosmagazine.com. This light is enough for the fetus to perceive light and dark, and even respond to light patterns, but not for detailed vision.”)
Mother’s talk to their babies since the early days. Even premature babies had parents talking to them before they being born premature, and afterwards, as usually a parent is always visiting, or at least nurses.
This must be taken into account when talking artificial wombs.
How much light gets in… and what kind. A 2025 modeling paper shows that longer-wavelength light (red) penetrates the abdomen best and can illuminate the uterus at levels like an overcast night or a clear full moon… i.e., dim but definitely not pitch-black.
DOI
And third-trimester fetuses can track simple light patterns beamed through the abdomen (they turn more toward “face-like” 3-dot patterns than upside-down ones). That’s a behavioral response to visual stimuli before birth.
cell.com
Sound matters a lot for cognition. Fetuses learn from speech before birth (neural traces measurable after birth), and newborns already prefer their mother’s voice. In preemies, more parent talk in the NICU predicts better language and cognitive scores months later.
PNAS
Science
PubMed
Light cycles and circadian cues. Dim, cycled lighting (day/night) in NICUs shows benefits over continuous bright light, and maternal circadian signals like melatonin do reach and entrain the fetus. So artificial wombs should mimic a real day–night rhythm, not constant light.
Cochrane
PMC
——————————
Practical takeaways for artificial womb design
Light: keep it dim and cycled (12h/12h is common in NICUs)… skewed to longer wavelengths, since that’s what penetrates in utero. Avoid continuous bright light.
DOI
Cochrane
Sound: schedule parent-voice sessions every day (live or recorded), not just generic music. Add womb-like low-frequency sounds (heartbeat, whoosh). These interventions improve stability and later language outcomes in preemies.
PubMed
+1
PNAS
Circadian cues: align lighting and, if ethical/feasible, consider maternal-like circadian signaling, since melatonin crosses the placenta and entrains fetal rhythms.
PMC
It looks like the 14-day outside the womb embryo limit is already being passed. The founder of the embryonic genetic advisory service, Orchid, Noor Siddiqui, was interviewed by the NY Times columnist Ross Dhothat and she said it takes 3-4 week for the full genetic profile of embryos that already have 125 cells (5 days) to be analyzed and for the results to be presented to IVF prospective parent(s): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/opinion/genetics-children-noor-siddiqui.html
So, it sounds like it’s at least a month between egg fertilization in a Petri dish to elective implantation in the mother’s womb, of whichever embryos are selected from a range of 1,000s of genetic tests. It may be that the embryos are frozen while all this testing and consulting is going on, but that’s not clear from the interview.
I wrote about artificial wombs, including a video showing the lamb experiment back in January, 2023: https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=The-Coming-of-Woman-Free-G-Artificial-Wombs_Fertility-230109-920.html
It’s definitely coming, in part to increase birth rates in every country rich enough to afford it – basically every developed country now – to decrease maternal death, though probably less of a consideration than inconvenience is to working mothers in modern medicine countries. Along with super-genetic counseling like Orchid is providing, which Chinese parents will eagerly adopt, unlike some backward looking religious types like Dhothat, who has had 5 children naturally, this will become the norm eventually. The advantages of mechanical gestation – though the “robot” model is just silly – and genetic counseling/selection are just too overwhelming to ignore. As these first babies grow up and show superior results, partly due to having richer parents and supportive cultures, more parents will see this as their right, and “natural parenting” will be looked upon as selfish and a drain on society.
Excited for this, but so much happens in the womb of a mother that creates a lifelong bond beyond just producing a living baby. I’m concerned for the mental state of the baby and mother.
If China can perfect the process I am sure everyone else will just steal it. Turnabout is fair play is it not?
The US never played Fair Play.
at least not when there were high stakes involved.
the US made rules as they favored the US, and when the rules stoped favoring the US, the US said “screw the rules”
This happened now with Trump. But has happened in the past too. Complaining of China is just hypocrisy.
As it will be if China complains of US stealing IPs.
ps: the US under Trump has broken almost all WTO tariffs rules. Most countries in the world are free to break US IPs, just saying.
3 scenarios
A – US stays in the WTO and countries reciprocate against the US breaking of rules by breaking US IPs, and US protects WTO by accepting it
B – WTO doesn´t recognizes the US broke most of its rules and doesn´t allow countries to reciprocate breaking US IPs. Other countries stop respecting the WTO and get out as if it proves to be a useless US tool, not a WORLD organization
C – US gets out of the WTO. Other countries keep following WTO among themselves but with the US out, countries are free to break US IPs on their own discretion.
Regardless if this has any merit, my bet is China will be the ones coming up with this eventually, maybe soon.
Every country out of sub-Saharan Africa is seeing the upcoming demographic collapse yet doing very little about it, just waiting idle for the tide.
While China is seeing it turn into a tsunami for their way of life, and doing what’s necessary to remediate it. And they’ll be happy to sell it to everyone else for the right price.
Unless things across nations get too sour ofc, and they see that as an strategic advantage.
It should be noted when evaluating the survival rate of IVF embryos that the survival rate for natural conceptions isn’t terribly high, either; Very early pregnancy is a sort of quality control bottle neck most conceptions don’t make it past.
Hi Brett
I was quite surprised by the stats – something like 80% of Conceptuses don’t implant or self-abort early in the process. I first read about it in this rather intriguing paper:
Am J Bioeth . 2008 Jul;8(7):12-9. doi: 10.1080/15265160802248146.
“The scourge: moral implications of natural embryo loss”
As someone who has argued for ectogenesis in Interstellar Space Colonization, the developments are exciting, yet the difficulties are many.
As I said, essentially it’s a quality control step, filtering out conceptions that had significant genetic or epigenetic problems. Not perfect, obviously, but without it the level of birth defects seen later in the process would be enormous.