Key Takeaways:
Unitree Robotics (688836.SH) opened 6.29x above its issue price at RMB1,100 in its Shanghai debut, valuing the world's largest humanoid robot maker at as much as RMB444.9 billion and minting founder Wang Xingxing a paper fortune above RMB100 billion.
"Unitree's IPO is regarded as a key milestone for the humanoid industry and can serve as a benchmark for other IPOs in the pipeline," said Ethan Qi, associate director at Counterpoint Research.
The 8,000x retail oversubscription, a STAR Market record, priced the offering at 150.80 yuan a share for 40.45 million new shares, raising 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million). Strategic placements went to DeepSeek, Tencent's Qishan Investment and PetroChina's Kunlun Capital. The stock last traded at RMB885.04, up 4.87x, with turnover of RMB17.639 billion and a market cap of RMB357.967 billion.
The debut establishes a daily audited valuation for a sector long priced inside private rounds. Figure, America's most valuable humanoid startup, raised at $39 billion despite no profit, while Unitree — profitable on 1.7 billion yuan of 2025 revenue — priced near 36x sales. The settled multiple that survives the first month will become the benchmark for 150-plus Chinese humanoid builders and the external comp for Tesla's Optimus assumptions.
Unitree sold 40.45 million new shares at 150.80 yuan each, a tenth of the company, raising about $904 million at a post-offering value near 61 billion yuan. When the filing went in last month, the planned raise implied a valuation around $5.9 billion. Demand moved the number roughly 50 percent higher before a single share traded.
The company behind the ticket is unusual for this category because it makes money. Unitree's prospectus showed revenue of about 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, roughly $235 million, with gross margins near 60 percent and a net margin in the mid-teens. Reuters reports the company had produced and delivered roughly 18,000 humanoid robots across its model range by July, more than anyone else in the world. In the run-up to the debut it unveiled a new robot called Superman, developed in just over three months, that manages a two-meter standing jump and a top speed of 12.66 meters per second.
Figure, America's most valuable humanoid startup, raised money last September at a $39 billion valuation. Its valuation is set inside its own funding rounds, and it polices secondary trading of its shares, so no outside price exists to argue with it. UBTech, the one humanoid maker already public in Hong Kong, delivers robots at a similar scale to Unitree and loses roughly 700 million yuan a year doing it.
The spread between that number and the private marks is now measurable, and it runs about $30 billion against a company with a fraction of Unitree's shipments and none of its profits. Every humanoid valuation on earth, private or implied, now has to coexist with a daily audited comp.
The listing turned early investors into paper billionaires. Meituan, which holds about 9.65 percent through three concert-party vehicles, recorded a paper gain of more than RMB33.3 billion. Lei Jun's Shunwei Capital affiliates booked gains exceeding RMB15.2 billion, while DeepSeek, High-Flyer Quant and High-Flyer Asset Management led by Liang Wenfeng together posted gains above RMB1.1 billion. A fund under DJI missed out on potential returns of more than RMB25 billion after an investment in 2018 that ultimately did not materialize.
Wang Xingxing, who founded the company in Hangzhou in 2016, saw his paper wealth mushroom past RMB100 billion, topping the corresponding equity market value of about RMB18.312 billion before the listing and setting a new wealth record for post-90s entrepreneurs in China. The previous record belonged to Insta360 founder Liu Jingkang at RMB20.2 billion.
The durable number arrives later, when the excitement fades and a settled multiple is left standing. That multiple becomes the benchmark the 150-plus Chinese companies building humanoids get measured against, and the reference the next robot prospectus has to justify itself beside. It is also the external comp for the Optimus assumptions folded into Tesla's market value. Tesla's near-term story remains robotaxi, and its humanoid line has not started production, so for now the public market's entire verdict on this category runs through one Hangzhou company. Whichever way the debut breaks, the machines run on Nvidia's robot chips and train in Nvidia's simulators, so the intelligence layer collects on every outcome.
The future of Unitree, however, hinges beyond its product competitiveness. In June, Unitree was added to the US government's blacklist of Chinese military-linked companies and barred from doing business with the Pentagon. Last month, Washington banned new humanoid and quadruped robot imports from foreign manufacturers, calling them a national security risk — a move aimed at China. While the restrictions do not cover existing models approved to be sold in the US, they could hurt future sales for companies like Unitree, particularly as over 40 percent of its revenue is generated overseas.
Unitree has said in its prospectus that it "may be unable to sustain rapid growth in overseas sales and could even see its performance decline" if the US continues to impose restrictions. Beyond borders, the company also has to show it can successfully deploy its robots across various industry applications and build up its embodied AI system, said Ming Lee, head of Greater China autos and industrials research at BofA Global Research.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
