Humanoid Robots Unitree IPO: A Bet on the Robotics Future

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The IPO of the Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree is oversubscribed thousands of times. The high valuation demonstrates confidence in embodied AI—and reveals how much future expectation is already priced in.

The robot manufacturer Unitree Robotics from Hangzhou is going public, and China's investors are lining up. On August 10, 2026, the company opened the subscription period for its listing on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. According to the company, the retail tranche was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed. The chance of allocation was 0.02 percent, reported the Chinese tech portal 36Kr.

Unitree thus becomes the first manufacturer of humanoid robots on a Chinese mainland stock exchange. The company is offering 40.45 million shares at 150.80 yuan (approximately 19 euros / $21 USD) each and aims to raise about 6.1 billion yuan (approximately 760 million euros / $830 million USD). The initial application targeted 4.2 billion yuan.

At the issue price, Unitree is valued at around 61 billion yuan (approximately 7.6 billion euros / $8.3 billion USD). Investors are thus paying 219 times the 2025 earnings and 36 times the revenue, according to calculations by the Reuters news agency. In Unitree's official peer group, general mechanical engineering, the average price-to-earnings ratio is 38.56.

A Reasonable Valuation?

"No hardware company has ever received such intense public attention and valuation with an annual revenue of just over one billion yuan," writes 36Kr. Early backers still consider the price too low. "It is very reasonable for the market capitalization to exceed 200 billion yuan after the listing, and I think it could even reach 400 billion yuan in the short term. Compared to the valuation of similar companies overseas, that is not excessive," said Yu Wenchao, an early investor in Unitree and partner at Dunhong Asset, to the tech portal. 400 billion yuan would be approximately 50 billion euros (approx. $55 billion USD).

Other observers are more skeptical. They point out that these valuations reflect less of today's profits and more of the hope for future profitability. Some investors consider the valuation justifiable, while others warn of overvaluation. The rush for the stock primarily demonstrates how much investors now believe in physical AI. The combination of AI models with machines that move through the real world has definitively become its own boom.

China's opportunities lie more in energy, infrastructure, and physical AI, while American and Northeast Asian technology corporations dominate in semiconductors and AI models, wrote analysts from Goldman Sachs. Since robotics was included in the 15th Five-Year Plan of the People's Republic, significant state capital has also flowed into the field. In the first half of 2026 alone, embodied intelligence companies raised more than 34.5 billion yuan (around 4.3 billion euros / $4.7 billion USD), writes UBS. Strategic investors include the National Social Security Fund, the AI developer Deepseek, as well as investment arms or subsidiaries of China National Petroleum, China Southern Power Grid, China Telecom, Tencent, and CITIC Securities. A who's who of the Chinese economy.

Bright Prospects?

Unitree's revenue more than quadrupled in 2025 to 1.7 billion yuan (around 210 million euros n / $230 million USD). The company is profitable, with an adjusted net profit of around 600 million yuan (around 75 million euros / $82 million USD), a rarity among humanoid start-ups. While the company originated in the robotics dog business, its most significant revenues now come from humanoid robots. From 2023 to 2025, Unitree sold 33,294 quadrupeds and 5,632 humanoids, according to the prospectus. However, the prospectus also warns that widespread commercial adoption remains uncertain.

Unitree has already lost the title of the world's largest provider of humanoids by shipments in 2025. In the first half of 2026, competitor Agibot from Shanghai delivered around 8,400 humanoid robots, a 562 percent increase compared to the same period last year, capturing 44 percent of the global market. Unitree fell to second place with around 5,900 units and 31 percent, according to the market research institute Smart Analytics Global. Agibot benefited from a broader range of products, from bipedal robots to robots on wheels, while Unitree primarily focuses on its G1 model.

Worldwide, around 19,100 humanoids were delivered in the six months, a 272 percent increase compared to the previous year. More than 97 percent of these came from China. Industrial and commercial customers accounted for over 70 percent of purchases, up from about 50 percent the previous year, according to market researchers. Humanoids are "increasingly being evaluated as production tools rather than exhibition pieces," states a UBS report. Agibot, too, has been preparing for an IPO in Hong Kong since July 2026, reported the South China Morning Post. Company founder Deng Taihua plans to increase revenue from just over one billion yuan last year tenfold by 2027. For now, however, the entire industry awaits Unitree's first trading day. If Unitree indeed achieves a market capitalization of several hundred billion yuan after its stock market debut, it would be a strong signal for the current boom surrounding embodied intelligence. A price below the issue price, on the other hand, would raise doubts about the high expectations. 

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