Unitree Robotics surged 629% in its Shanghai trading debut after raising 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in an initial public offering, becoming the first publicly traded humanoid robot maker in mainland China.
Shares of the Hangzhou-based company, officially known as Yushu Technology Co., opened at 1,100 yuan from an IPO price of 150.8 yuan, giving the company a market value of about 445 billion yuan ($66 billion).
The debut underscores strong demand for companies tied to China’s embodied-AI push. Unitree’s retail order book exceeded the 7.07 trillion yuan of bids generated by memory-chip maker CXMT Corp. in its blockbuster offering last month.
Source: Bloombergju
Part of the oversubscription also reflects the structure of China’s IPO market. Regulators have generally remained cautious on richly priced offerings, which can leave deal sizes below the amount investors are willing to commit when market sentiment is strong.
The Focus Shifts to Commercialization
The surge comes as investors increasingly look beyond foundation models and computing infrastructure toward AI applications in the physical world.
JPMorgan expects global humanoid robot shipments to rise to 60,000 units in 2026 from 18,000 in 2025 and reach 1.75 million by 2030, with China accounting for more than half of global demand. The bank said the sector is approaching a mass-production inflection point, supported by commercialization, supply-chain localization and policy backing.
Will global humanoid robot shipments exceed 60,000 units in 2026?
Unitree is already one of the largest players in the market. It shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, ranking first globally, while cumulative sales of its quadruped robots exceeded 33,000 units.
Revenue rose to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025 from 393 million yuan a year earlier. Net profit reached 278 million yuan, while gross margin exceeded 60%.
A High Valuation, and More Capital for Expansion
Unitree’s IPO valued the company at 35.89 times sales, compared with roughly 20 times for Hong Kong-listed peers including UBTech Robotics Corp. and Shenzhen Dobot Corp. Its first-day surge pushed that valuation substantially higher.
The company plans to use about 4.2 billion yuan of the IPO proceeds for embodied-AI model development, humanoid robot research, new products and manufacturing expansion.
About 20% of the offering was allocated to strategic investors. Participants included AI startup DeepSeek as well as investment arms linked to China National Petroleum Corp., China Southern Power Grid Co. and China Telecom Corp.
DeepSeek received a 2.31% stake allocation with a three-year lockup, while Tencent-linked investors also subscribed and agreed to work with Unitree on robotics intelligence models and deployment scenarios.
The listing may also set a reference point for other Chinese robotics companies pursuing public offerings. Leju Robotics and Deep Robotics are among those considering IPOs, while Shanghai AgiBot Innovation Technology has begun preparations for a Hong Kong listing, according to local media reports.
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