Chinese humanoid and quadruped robot maker Unitree Robotics had a spectacular debut on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market yesterday, surging more than 600% above the initial public offering price. The explosive launch signals that humanoid robotics and the AI-driven tech sector in general are full of investor interest.
Unitree shares opened at 1,100 yuan ($163) per share versus 150.80 yuan ($22.36) at the IPO price. That’s 629% higher than the IPO price. Unitree’s market capitalisation soared to 445 billion yuan or $66 billion at the opening.
That dramatic debut made Unitree one of the world’s most closely watched publicly listed robotics companies almost instantly. The company had entered the market with an IPO valuation of about 61 billion yuan, so the opening price represented an extraordinary re-rating by investors.
Unitree priced its IPO at 150.80 yuan per share and raised around 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) through its offering. The retail portion of the IPO was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed, reflecting the huge appetite of Chinese investors for companies in artificial intelligence, robotics and advanced manufacturing.
The company was founded by engineer Wang Xingxing in Hangzhou in 2016. Unitree had good coverage on the market at a relatively low price point with four-legged robots but then moved to humanoid robotics in 2017. It is making waves with its robots dancing, performing martial arts, and other advanced activities.
Unitree is growing as China puts more and more emphasis on robotics and “embodied AI” as strategic technology sectors. Investors are betting humanoid robots could move beyond demonstrations and research environments into factories, warehouses, homes and other workplaces.
It has made some commercial progress. Unitree reported revenue of almost 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, and more than 40 percent of its revenue came from overseas markets, according to the Associated Press. Unitree and Chinese robotics company AGIBOT accounted for more than 10,000 of the approximately 15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in the last year.
But the huge valuation that came with the debut has also raised questions about whether the market has gotten too optimistic about the future of humanoid robotics. Unitree was priced at 219 times its 2025 earnings and 36 times sales at the IPO price, according to Reuters. That valuation exploded with the first surge.
But the successful launch of the company also comes with challenges in robotics. Humanoid robots are still in the early stages of commercialization, and most applications are very much demonstrations and research in controlled environments, while real-world applications are not widespread in real-world workplaces.
Geopolitical constraints are another hurdle. The U.S. government has closed the door to production of some foreign humanoid and quadruped robots for national security reasons. Unitree has denied that its products should be considered military technology and has said they are civilian.
But investors see huge long-term potential in China’s manufacturing ecosystem. China’s manufacturing ecosystem is a boon for robotics companies that can scale supply chains and engineering talent and a huge domestic industrial market. Artificial intelligence, automation, and advanced manufacturing are encouraged by the government, and the industry will be even more optimistic.
Unitree’s debut might also be a benchmark for the other Chinese humanoid robotics startups going to the public markets in the future. There are also several competitors that are expected to go to the stock market as the public market appetite for physical AI is growing.
So the extraordinary opening is much more than just an IPO. It shows how aggressively investors are positioning themselves around the possibility that humanoid robots could become the next major technology platform after smartphones, cloud computing and generative AI.
But the first day surge shouldn’t be seen as a reflection of Unitree’s value. IPO prices are always quite volatile, especially if investor demand is far greater than the available supply. The future valuation of the company will ultimately depend on revenue growth, profitability and commercial adoption, and how it can develop impressive robotic demonstrations into sustainable large-scale businesses.
But Unitree has made one of the most dramatic technology IPO debuts of the year. From the IPO price of 150.80 yuan to an opening price of 1,100 yuan, the 629% increase has made Unitree an international symbol for the exploding investor interest in humanoid robotics.
Comments
Please to leave a comment on this article.