The highly anticipated initial public offering of Unitree Robotics drew huge demand from retail investors as China’s leading humanoid robot maker opened books for an offering that’s set to give it a market valuation of $9 billion.
The retail portion of the IPO was 5,526 times subscribed, with individual investors submitting 9.8 million orders for about 8.1 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion) of shares according to Bloomberg calculations based on an exchange filing released on Monday. That exceeds the 7.1 trillion-yuan retail order book in memory chipmaker CXMT Corp’s blockbuster offering last month, the second-biggest China debut ever.
The Hangzhou-based company sold 40.4 million shares at 150.8 yuan apiece, raising about 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) to become mainland China’s first publicly traded humanoid robot maker. Unitree, officially known as Yushu Technology Co., is expected to debut on Shanghai’s STAR Market this month.
China is increasingly turning to the capital market to fund its tech race against the US in AI. Humanoid robots have become Beijing’s strategic priority, and Unitree is a key player with its dancing robots at the annual Spring Festival Gala drawing global attention.
The high level of interest underscores the investor appetite for physical AI companies, one of Beijing’s strategic priorities. Unitree is kicking off what might be the next wave of China technology IPOs, to follow a string of debuts by companies along the AI supply chain that culminated with CXMT raising 66.6 billion yuan last month and subsequently becoming the largest mainland-listed company.
A successful listing could also build momentum for other Chinese robotics companies pursuing IPOs, including Leju Robotics and Deep Robotics. Another humanoid robot developer, Shanghai AgiBot Innovation Technology, has started the process for a Hong Kong listing, Securities Daily reported in July.
The retail enthusiasm puts Unitree on track for a potential first-day pop, following some hot recent tech debuts. The IPOs of companies including MiniMax Group Inc., Moore Threads Technology Co., MetaX Integrated Circuits Shanghai Co., and Z.AI – formerly known as Zhipu – were all more than 1,000 times subscribed and the shares opened trading with massive gains.
The strong subscription was also likely aided by backing from strategic investors including AI startup DeepSeek, reinforcing confidence in Unitree and the growing convergence of artificial intelligence and robotics. About 20% of the shares for sale have been allocated to strategic investors including DeepSeek, a Tencent Holdings Ltd.-affiliated investment vehicle, and investment arms of major state-owned enterprises such as China National Petroleum Corp., China Southern Power Grid Co. and China Telecom Corp.
DeepSeek received a 2.31% stake allocation with a lockup period of three years. The collaboration allows Unitree to draw on DeepSeek’s AI strength to develop embodied-intelligence models for its humanoid robots, which gained broad public attention after appearing in a Chinese Spring Festival gala.
Unitree’s IPO values the company at 35.89 times sales, according to the company’s prospectus. That compares with ratios of about 20 for industry peers listed in Hong Kong such as UBTech Robotics Corp. and Shenzhen Dobot Corp.
Unitree stands apart in the industry, because its business model is based on delivering significant cost and performance advantages by designing integrated, in-house actuators rather than assembling components from multiple suppliers. By applying a vertical integration strategy across its product range – similar to carmaker BYD Co. – the company reduces expenses and drives up sales volume, though it still needs to combine this hardware success with stronger robot intelligence and software applications.
The company shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots last year, ranking first globally, according to its prospectus. Cumulative sales of its quadruped robots exceeded 33,000 units. Revenue surged to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, from 393 million yuan the year before, according to its prospectus. Net profit was 278 million yuan last year, while its gross margin exceeded 60%.
“From a conventional valuation standpoint, Unitree’s valuation is clearly above what would be considered a reasonable range,” said Shen Meng, director at Beijing-based investment bank Chanson & Co. “But for companies in emerging industries, especially those with a leading scale advantage, growth metrics often matter more than traditional financial metrics.”
