Unitree Goes Public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange
The Hangzhou-based company becomes the first general-purpose humanoid robot manufacturer to list on a mainland Chinese exchange, following record demand from retail investors.
The Hangzhou-based company becomes the first general-purpose humanoid robot manufacturer to list on a mainland Chinese exchange, following record demand from retail investors.
Chinese company Unitree Robotics, a manufacturer of humanoid robots based in Hangzhou, will begin trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. The news was reported by Reuters on Monday, citing a filing with the exchange. This makes Unitree the first general-purpose humanoid robot manufacturer to list on a mainland Chinese exchange.
The initial public offering (IPO) has generated exceptional investor interest. The company sold approximately 40 million new shares at a price of 150.8 yuan, raising a total of 6.1 billion yuan, or about 900 million U.S. dollars. This values the entire company at nearly 61 billion yuan, close to 9 billion U.S. dollars. That valuation is significantly higher than earlier market expectations of 42 billion yuan, or 7 billion U.S. dollars, which had been mentioned during preparations for the listing.
Demand from retail investors was record-breaking for the STAR Market: the offering was oversubscribed more than 8,000 times, with an allocation rate of approximately 0.018 percent. The average return on the debut of new Chinese listings in the first half of 2026 was 233 percent, suggesting that euphoria is currently the baseline state of the market. Gray market prices indicated potential returns of three to four times the offered price on the first day of trading.
On Monday, two days before the listing and ahead of the opening of the World Robot Conference in Beijing, Unitree unveiled a new fast humanoid robot nicknamed 'Superman.' The company says it was built in just over three months and can jump two meters from a standstill and reach a speed of 12.66 meters per second, faster than Usain Bolt at his peak. Unitree openly states that the robot is still in development, but the video gave investors another viral piece of content to share just before trading began.
Founder Wang Xingxing, who is still in his mid-thirties, holds roughly a third of the company and is on paper China's first billionaire in the field of humanoid robots. Investors include Tencent, Alibaba, and AI startup DeepSeek. The company's revenue has grown more than fourfold year-over-year, and Unitree, unusually for the sector, has been profitable for several years. However, net profit in the first quarter fell by nearly half due to increased spending on research and marketing. Competition is intensifying: rivals such as AgiBot, Leju, and EngineAI are planning their own listings in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Even Nvidia, whose chips power much of this boom, is expanding its bets on other robot manufacturers.
