AI Wiki

Unitree Robotics IPO

Chinese AIHumanoid RobotsRobotics CompaniesVenture Capital
14 min read
Updated
Suggest editHistoryTalk
RawGraph

Last edited

Fact-checked

Sources

27 citations

Revision

v2 · 2,853 words

Fact-checks are independent of edits: a reviewer re-verifies the article against its sources and stamps the date. How we verify

The Unitree Robotics IPO is the pending initial public offering of Unitree Technology Co., Ltd. (宇树科技股份有限公司), better known as Unitree Robotics, on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market. The issuer converted from a limited liability company to a joint-stock company in May 2025 and dropped "Hangzhou" from its registered name in October 2025, before filing.[23][24] Unitree filed on March 20, 2026, cleared the exchange's listing review committee on June 1, and obtained China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) assent to its registration on July 2, with the Shanghai Stock Exchange website showing the registration as effective on July 6.[1][4][7] The company plans to sell at least 40,446,400 new shares, no less than 10 percent of its post-offering capital, and to raise 4.202 billion yuan, put by Caixin at about $618 million and by Reuters at about $619 million.[1][2][6]

As of July 27, 2026 the shares had not been priced and had not begun trading. Unitree had published no offering prospectus (招股意向书), no bookbuilding schedule, no subscription date and no price range, and Reuters reported after the approval that the company "has not set a launch date or price range," noting that the CSRC approval is valid for twelve months.[2] The South China Morning Post reported that Unitree was still finalising underwriting arrangements and could debut "as early as late July."[3] Everything below therefore describes a planned offering, not a completed one. If it completes, it would be the first listing on China's A-share market by a company built around humanoid robots and embodied AI.[4]

Yuan amounts here are converted at roughly 6.8 yuan to the dollar, the rate implied by the dollar equivalents the cited outlets used in mid-2026.

Timeline

DateEvent
June 2025Series C round closes at a post-money valuation of 12.7 billion yuan[13]
2025-06-18CSRC chairman Wu Qing announces the STAR Market "1+6" reform at the Lujiazui Forum, including a pilot IPO pre-review mechanism[18]
2025-09Reuters reports Unitree is targeting an IPO valuation of as much as 50 billion yuan (about $7 billion) and expects to file in the fourth quarter[17]
2026-03-20Shanghai Stock Exchange accepts the STAR Market application; prospectus discloses a 4.202 billion yuan target[6][8]
2026-05-25Updated filing discloses first-quarter 2026 results and first-half guidance[9]
2026-06-01SSE listing review committee clears the application, 73 days after acceptance[4][5]
2026-06-02Application status changes to "submitted for registration"[7]
2026-07-02CSRC assents to the registration, 104 days after acceptance[1][15]
2026-07-06Registration shown as effective on the exchange's website[7][11]
PendingOffering prospectus, bookbuilding, pricing, subscription, listing[2][3]

The 73-day run from acceptance to committee clearance was reported as the fastest case since the STAR Market's pre-review mechanism took effect, and the 104-day run to registration approval was described the same way.[15][25] That mechanism, announced in June 2025 and modelled on confidential-submission regimes in overseas markets, lets qualifying technology companies have an application reviewed before it becomes public; the CSRC stressed at the time that review standards were unchanged and that pre-review is not a pre-approval.[18] According to People's Daily Online, Unitree was the second company to file under it.[5]

The offering

ItemDetail
Exchange and boardShanghai Stock Exchange, STAR Market (科创板)[6]
New sharesNo fewer than 40,446,400[7][11]
Stake soldNo less than 10 percent of post-offering share capital[7]
Pre-offering share capital364 million shares[11]
Target proceeds4.202 billion yuan (about $618 million to $619 million)[1][2]
Sponsor and lead underwriterCITIC Securities[11]
Controlling shareholderWang Xingxing, 23.8216 percent of equity directly and 34.7630 percent including the Shanghai Yuyi incentive platform, with 68.7816 percent of voting rights[10][26]

Dividing the target raise by the minimum share count implies something near 104 yuan a share, but that is arithmetic rather than a reported figure: Unitree has published no price, and the final number comes out of the bookbuilding process.[2][7]

Proceeds are earmarked for four projects. Research-type projects account for 85.15 percent of the total, or about 3.577 billion yuan, of which the single largest line is 2.022 billion yuan (48.13 percent of the raise) for intelligent robot model research and development; a manufacturing base takes 624 million yuan.[12] The exchange summarised the plan as robot model R&D, robot body development, new product creation and an intelligent robot manufacturing base.[2][5]

Valuation: which number measures what

Four very different valuations circulate in coverage of this deal, and they measure different things. Only the third is derived from the actual terms on file.

FigureWhat it measuresSource
12.7 billion yuan (about $1.8 billion at mid-2025 exchange rates)Post-money valuation of the June 2025 Series C, the last private roundProspectus[13]
Up to 50 billion yuan (about $7 billion)A valuation Unitree was said to be targeting six months before it filedReuters, September 2025[17]
About 42 billion yuan (about $6.2 billion)Implied by the terms on file: 4.202 billion yuan for no less than 10 percent of the companyProspectus arithmetic; SCMP[3][7]
About 40 billion yuan (about $5.9 billion)The same offer valuation, rounded down by CaixinCaixin Global[1]
Around 100 billion yuan (about $14.7 billion)Speculation about where the stock might trade after listing, not a term of the offeringChinese market commentary[15][16]

The last row deserves the most caution. It is not a company figure, not an underwriter figure, and not derived from the prospectus. Chinese financial media have treated a 100-billion-yuan market capitalisation as the level retail sentiment is anticipating: the 21st Century Business Herald ran the question as a headline in March 2026 ("can Unitree's market value break 100 billion yuan?"), and Sina Finance reported in July 2026 that the market was "anticipating" that level without attributing it to named brokerages.[15][16] The 21st Century Business Herald piece also noted the ordinary mechanics behind such expectations: STAR Market debutants have commonly risen more than 50 percent on their first day, so an offer valuation of 42 billion yuan does not have to move far to produce a much larger headline number.[16] None of this is a forecast the wiki endorses, and an actual first-day market capitalisation, once it exists, supersedes all of it.

Financials

Unitree is unusual among humanoid robot makers in being profitable at all. The figures below come from the prospectus and its updates. The 2022 to 2024 columns are audited; 2025 figures were reviewed rather than fully audited at the time of the March filing and were revised slightly in later versions.

YearRevenueNet profit attributable to shareholders
2022123 million yuan-22.10 million yuan[10]
2023159 million yuan-11.15 million yuan[10]
2024392 million yuan94.50 million yuan[10]
20251.699 billion yuan278 million yuan[1][4]

The March 2026 filing put 2025 revenue at 1.708 billion yuan, up 335.36 percent, and net profit excluding non-recurring items at about 600 million yuan, up 674.29 percent.[8][10] Later filings and Xinhua reported 1.699 billion yuan of revenue and 591 million yuan of adjusted profit.[4][11] The adjusted figure is larger than the headline net profit because non-recurring items were a net charge in 2025. Main-business gross margin rose from 44.18 percent in 2022 to 44.22 percent in 2023, 56.41 percent in 2024 and 60.13 percent in 2025.[11][12] Operating cash flow swung from negative 30.20 million yuan in 2022 to positive 672 million yuan in 2025, with cash on hand of 1.794 billion yuan at the end of September 2025.[13]

Business mix

For the first nine months of 2025, humanoid robots passed quadrupeds in revenue for the first time: 595 million yuan (51.53 percent of robot revenue) against 488 million yuan for quadrupeds.[12] Humanoid gross margin was 62.91 percent and quadruped 55.49 percent, with the industrial B series at 67.14 percent and the consumer Go series at 50.51 percent.[12] The mid-size G1 accounted for 88.90 percent of humanoid sales by September 2025, with the full-size H1 fading; the H2 and the lower-cost R1 arrived later.[12]

Humanoid shipments went from 5 units in 2023 to 410 in 2024 and more than 5,500 in 2025, alongside cumulative quadruped shipments above 30,000 across the reporting period.[12] Unit costs fell over the same stretch, quadrupeds from 22,300 yuan in 2022 to 12,100 yuan by September 2025 and humanoids from 73,200 yuan in 2023 to 62,200 yuan.[12]

Customer concentration is low by the standards of Chinese hardware IPOs. The top five customers were 10.61 percent of revenue in the first nine months of 2025, down from 14.55 percent in 2022, with JD.com the largest at 3.54 percent.[13] The concentration that matters is on the demand side instead: 73.60 percent of humanoid revenue came from scientific research and education buyers, 17.39 percent from commercial and consumer customers and 9.01 percent from industrial applications.[12]

2026 to date

Growth slowed sharply in the quarter after the filing. Unitree disclosed on May 25, 2026 that first-quarter revenue was 423 million yuan, up 68.49 percent against 332.64 percent for full-year 2025, while adjusted net profit fell 52.55 percent to 40.25 million yuan from 84.84 million a year earlier, which the company attributed to a large increase in R&D and selling expenses.[9] It guided first-half 2026 revenue of 1.052 billion to 1.128 billion yuan (up 35.62 to 45.41 percent) and adjusted net profit of 236 million to 283 million yuan, still down 6.43 to 21.97 percent year on year.[9]

Why the listing matters

China put embodied intelligence into its national Government Work Report in 2025 as one of the future industries to be cultivated, and the STAR Market reform package of June 2025 was explicitly aimed at speeding hard-technology companies to market.[18] Unitree is the test case for both: an embodied AI company reaching the A-share market in 104 days, with a price that will set the first public reference point for Chinese humanoid robotics valuations. Xinhua framed the clearance as China's markets welcoming their "first embodied intelligence stock."[4]

The peer set is thin. UBTech is listed in Hong Kong but lost money on larger revenue, reporting roughly 2 billion yuan of 2025 revenue against a net loss of about 700 million yuan while carrying a market capitalisation of HK$54.8 billion (about $6.9 billion).[3] AgiBot and the rest of the Chinese field remain private or listed only indirectly. That comparison is what makes the SCMP's framing apt: the offer is positioned to set a valuation benchmark for the sector rather than to be measured against one.[3]

Comparison with other 2026 listings

Western humanoid developers have stayed private. Figure AI, Apptronik and 1X Technologies had all raised large private rounds without filing to list. The exception is Agility Robotics, which agreed in mid-2026 to go public through a merger with the special purpose acquisition company Churchill Capital Corp XI at about $2.5 billion, a deal expected to raise more than $620 million and to close later in 2026; TechCrunch described it as making Agility the first pure-play humanoid robotics company to trade publicly.[20] Whether Unitree or Agility gets there first is a matter of days or months, and neither had traded as of July 27, 2026.

The two most closely watched prospective AI listings of 2026 in the United States were also unfinished. Anthropic confidentially submitted a draft Form S-1 to the SEC on June 1, 2026, stating that "the number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set" and that the submission gave it "the option to go public after the SEC completes its review."[22] The OpenAI IPO was at a similar preparatory stage. Unitree's offering is far smaller than either would be, but it is considerably further along its regulatory process, since a Chinese registration approval is the last formal hurdle before pricing.[2]

Risks and criticism

These are points raised by the prospectus itself, by regulators or by named outlets and researchers. None is asserted here as the wiki's own assessment.

  • The technology thesis may not arrive. The prospectus warns that if Unitree and the global embodied-intelligence industry fail to achieve significant progress on embodied large models, the timeline for large-scale deployment of general-purpose robots is uncertain, and it flags limited dexterous-hand precision and insufficient model generalisation in factory settings.[12]
  • Buyers are mostly laboratories. With 73.60 percent of humanoid revenue coming from research and education customers, the commercial and industrial return on investment is largely unproven, a point the 21st Century Business Herald pressed alongside the observation that Unitree's own large models were still in testing.[12][16]
  • Margins are already compressing. The 52.55 percent fall in first-quarter 2026 adjusted profit, driven by rising R&D and selling costs, arrived before the offering was priced.[9]
  • R&D spending is small for the claims made. Sina Finance counted 22 references to "full-stack" in-house development in the prospectus and set that against 150 million yuan of R&D spending across 2022 to 2024, roughly one-ninth of UBTech's 1.397 billion yuan, an R&D expense ratio of 7.73 percent in the first nine months of 2025 against UBTech's 35.1 percent in the first half of 2025, and a patent portfolio of 262 grants, of which only 20 are domestic invention patents (11.83 percent of the 169 granted in China), against UBTech's 2,790 grants with more than 55 percent invention patents.[14]
  • Control is concentrated. Wang Xingxing holds 23.8216 percent of the equity directly, 34.7630 percent counting the Shanghai Yuyi employee incentive partnership he controls, and 68.7816 percent of the voting rights. The gap comes from a dual-class arrangement the STAR Market permits: in May 2025 the company designated 44,074,300 of his shares as Class A special voting shares carrying ten votes each against one vote for an ordinary share.[10][26]
  • Product security has been challenged publicly. In April 2025 researchers Andreas Makris and Kevin Finisterre disclosed an undocumented remote-access tunnel service, built on the CloudSail product of Zhexi Technology, pre-installed on the Go1 quadruped; CloudSail API data showed 1,919 devices had connected to the service at some point. The researchers raised the possibility of similar arrangements in newer models.[19] SecurityWeek recorded no response from Unitree.[19]
  • STAR Market rules require their own warning. Filings for the board carry the standard notice that STAR Market companies feature heavy R&D spending, high operating risk, unstable results and delisting risk, and that investors face substantial market risk. It appears on the cover page of Unitree's own prospectus.[27]

A separate strand of commentary comes from interested parties. KraneShares, which runs STAR Market and humanoid robotics ETFs that could hold the stock, published an explainer describing Unitree as offering a "rare combination in robotics manufacturing today: hyper-growth, profitability, and meaningful cash generation" while also noting it "will not be immune to volatility."[21] That is an issuer with a position, not neutral analysis.

See also

References

  1. "Unitree Robotics Wins Approval for $618 Million STAR Market IPO." Caixin Global, 2026-07-03. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2026-07-03/unitree-robotics-wins-approval-for-618-million-star-market-ipo-102460136.html ↩
  2. "Chinese robot maker Unitree wins approval for $619 million Shanghai IPO." Reuters via Yahoo Finance, 2026-07-03. https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/chinese-robot-maker-unitree-wins-052743978.html ↩
  3. "Unitree IPO to test valuations as venture capital floods China robotics." South China Morning Post, 2026-07. https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/article/3359290/unitree-ipo-test-valuations-venture-capital-floods-china-robotics ↩
  4. "宇树科技IPO过会 A股将迎'具身智能第一股'." Xinhua, 2026-06-02. https://www.news.cn/fortune/20260602/d884707afea744ceb957811d4d400e63/c.html ↩
  5. "China's Unitree Robotics clears STAR Market listing review." People's Daily Online, 2026-06-02. https://en.people.cn/n3/2026/0602/c90000-20462845.html ↩
  6. "Racing to Become the First Humanoid Robot Stock on the A-Share Market! Unitree Robotics' STAR Market IPO Application Accepted, Planning to Raise RMB 4.202 Billion." Shanghai Stock Exchange, 2026-03-23. https://english.sse.com.cn/news/newsrelease/digest/c/c_20260323_10812743.shtml ↩
  7. "宇树科技，IPO注册生效！" Sina Finance, 2026-07-07. https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2026-07-07/doc-inifxtrf1538462.shtml ↩
  8. "宇树科技2025年度实现营业收入17.08亿元，同比增长335.36%." Sina Finance, 2026-03-20. https://finance.sina.com.cn/roll/2026-03-20/doc-inhrrrew0785042.shtml ↩
  9. "宇树科技：一季度实现营业收入4.23亿元，同比增幅由上年度的332.64%回落至68.49%." Securities Times (证券时报), 2026-05-25. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3926375.html ↩
  10. "宇树科技IPO获受理！预计2025年扣非净利润暴增674.29%！" Securities Times (证券时报), 2026-03-20. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/3688950.html ↩
  11. "宇树科技，IPO注册生效！" Securities Times (证券时报), 2026-07-06. https://www.stcn.com/article/detail/4000678.html ↩
  12. "深度拆解宇树科技招股书：一年营收17亿，宇树机器人都卖给了谁？" Economic Observer (经济观察网), 2026-03-20. https://www.eeo.com.cn/2026/0320/813654.shtml ↩
  13. "宇树科技靠融资还是靠卖货活着？翻完招股书，我们挖到了这8个关键点." InfoQ China, 2026-03. https://www.infoq.cn/article/lOkVPrOqAP8df2JEbwmU ↩
  14. "宇树科技IPO：招股书22次提及'全栈'自研 研发费用仅为优必选的九分之一." Sina Finance, 2026-03-27. https://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/observe/2026-03-27/doc-inhsmnzp9517235.shtml ↩
  15. "104天闪电过会，估值暴涨两倍：上市后宇树科技与巨头较量才刚开始." Sina Finance, 2026-07-06. https://finance.sina.com.cn/wm/2026-07-06/doc-inifwwms8555688.shtml ↩
  16. "'站起来'赚钱的宇树，市值能冲破千亿吗？" 21st Century Business Herald (21经济网), 2026-03-24. https://www.21jingji.com/article/20260324/herald/9cf337344e78c525ae5ed957d2afd82c.html ↩
  17. "Exclusive: Chinese robotics firm Unitree eyeing $7 billion IPO valuation, sources say." Reuters via Investing.com, 2025-09-08. https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/exclusivechinese-robotics-firm-unitree-eyeing-7-billion-ipo-valuation-sources-say-4228710 ↩
  18. "详解科创板IPO预先审阅机制：发行上市审核标准不降低." 21st Century Business Herald (21财经), 2025-06-20. https://m.21jingji.com/article/20250620/8cce398192e9b52756cd6d9b4afe730b.html ↩
  19. "Undocumented Remote Access Backdoor Found in Unitree Go1 Robot Dog." SecurityWeek, 2025-04-01. https://www.securityweek.com/undocumented-remote-access-backdoor-found-in-unitree-go1-robot-dog/ ↩
  20. "This humanoid robotics company is going public, but its CEO isn't promising a robot in your home anytime soon." TechCrunch, 2026-07-05. https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/05/this-humanoid-robotics-company-is-going-public-but-its-ceo-isnt-promising-a-robot-in-your-home-anytime-soon/ ↩
  21. "A Complete Guide To Unitree Robotics' 2026 IPO, Why It Matters For STAR Market ETF KSTR & Humanoid Robotics ETF KOID." KraneShares, 2026. https://kraneshares.com/a-complete-guide-to-unitree-robotics-2026-ipo-why-it-matters-for-star-market-etf-kstr-humanoid-robotics-etf-koid/ ↩
  22. "Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC." Anthropic, 2026-06-01. https://www.anthropic.com/news/confidential-draft-s1-sec ↩
  23. "宇树科技回应公司更名." China News Service (中新网), 2025-05-30. https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2025/05-30/10424536.shtml ↩
  24. "宇树科技完成更名，王兴兴任董事长." Sina Finance, 2025-10-23. https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/2025-10-23/doc-infuwnhq7917998.shtml ↩
  25. "宇树科技科创板IPO过会拟募资42亿元，73天创预先审阅机制最快纪录." EE Times China (电子工程专辑), 2026-06-02. https://www.eet-china.com/news/202606022292.html ↩
  26. "宇树科技IPO终于来了，募资42亿，王兴兴控制近7成表决权." TMTPost (钛媒体), 2026-03-20. https://www.tmtpost.com/7923180.html ↩
  27. "宇树科技股份有限公司首次公开发行股票并在科创板上市招股说明书（申报稿）." Shanghai Stock Exchange, 2026-03-20. https://static.sse.com.cn/stock/disclosure/announcement/c/202603/002178_20260320_QY8F.pdf ↩

Improve this article

Add missing citations, update stale details, or suggest a clearer explanation. Every suggestion is reviewed for sourcing before it goes live.

1 revision by 1 contributors · full history

Suggest edit

What links here

Unitree Robotics