Unitree Robotics' IPO: A Wealth Windfall for Early Investors

Original author: Gu Lingyu

Original editor: Xu Qingyang

Source: Tencent Tech

In the winter of 2017, because high-speed trains prohibited carrying large-capacity lithium batteries, Wang Xingxing boarded a train for over ten hours, carrying a robot dog from Hangzhou to Beijing to pitch to Sequoia China. At that time, his company was nearly out of funds to pay salaries.

Nine years later, Unitree Technologies is set to become China's first humanoid robot company listed on the A-share market. The latest update is that on August 6, Unitree Technologies announced its offering price at RMB 150.80 per share, with an online roadshow on the 7th and online subscription opening on the 10th.

Many expect its market capitalization to surpass 100 billion yuan. Several secondary market professionals told Tencent Technology the same view: although stock market volatility has been high recently, Yu Shu’s IPO will still be highly sought after, “because people believe that as a policy-supported industry, the leader will inevitably rise.”

According to the prospectus, the company is issuing 40.4464 million new shares, representing 10% of the total post-offering capital. The final offering price was set at RMB 150.80 per share on August 6, resulting in actual proceeds of approximately RMB 6.1 billion and a post-offering valuation of about RMB 61 billion. The initial online offering amounted to only 6.471 million shares, which, at 500 shares per subscription unit, translates to just 12,942 winning numbers available for allocation across the entire market—fewer than 13,000. This means that for every 10,000 valid subscription units, only about two winning allocations are available.

In incomplete statistics, over the past two years, more than 300 startups have emerged in China’s embodied intelligence industry. By this August, at least five companies had valuations exceeding RMB 20 billion, and nearly 50 companies were preparing for listings on the Hong Kong or A-share markets. For these companies, Unitree’s stock price will serve as a valuation anchor for the A-share market and a reference point for the Hong Kong market.

This is a critical moment—yet a disconnect is emerging between the wealth creation in the primary market fueled by the concept of embodied intelligence and the realities of the secondary market.

Wang Xingxing does not fit the typical profile of a hard tech entrepreneur—this became the basis for Unitree’s early investors’ contrarian bet.

He graduated from Shanghai University with an unremarkable resume. During early fundraising, he faced repeated rejections. During the golden decade of internet model innovation, VCs relied on templates to evaluate founders: elite university backgrounds, executives from major tech companies, returnee entrepreneurs, or serial founders. These criteria ensured a minimum baseline for startup projects but also filtered out entrepreneurs like Wang Xingxing.

Partner of Chuxin Capital, Tian Jiangchuan, has publicly reflected on this experience. At the end of 2017, Tian Jiangchuan met Wang Xingxing for the first time at a café in Hangzhou. At the time, Unitree’s products already demonstrated an extreme focus on cost reduction and a differentiated technological approach, but Tian ultimately decided against investing. “Looking back, the main issue was my ‘elitist arrogance’: Xingxing graduated from Shanghai University, and I believed the robotics industry required top-tier academic credentials,” Tian later admitted. It wasn’t until 2020 that Chuxin Capital re-invested in Unitree at more than four times the original valuation.

An investor who has followed China's robotics sector for over a decade told Tencent Tech that when Unitree was founded, the quadruped robot sector received little attention in China, and very few institutions had engaged with it in its early stages.

Time rewarded the earliest “contrarians.” In 2016, Yin Fangming, formerly employed at MediaTek, Sogou, and Qihoo 360, made a RMB 2 million angel investment and acquired a 15% equity stake in Unitree Robotics. This investment corresponded to a post-money valuation of only RMB 13.33 million. Today, this investment is held indirectly through the holding platform Tianjin Junwan Hongyi, which owns 3.0699% of Unitree Robotics overall, making it the tenth-largest shareholder. After piercing through the structure, Yin Fangming indirectly holds approximately 0.46% of Unitree. Based on an initial offering valuation of RMB 42 billion, the implied paper value of Yin’s indirect stake is approximately RMB 200 million, representing a total return of about 100 times. In 2025, he prematurely cashed out RMB 58 million by selling a portion of his existing shares.

In terms of return multiples, the institution with the highest multiple is Variable Capital. This early-stage fund invested just 2.09 million yuan in the angel round of Unitree Robotics in 2018, and today has achieved a return multiple of 174.62x, with total returns of approximately 364 million yuan including exited portions.

Sequoia China’s return multiple is also impressive. Wang Xing’s pitch, earned from that train ride, prompted Sequoia Capital’s seed fund to immediately issue a letter of intent. This $15 million investment corresponded to a post-money valuation of just RMB 150 million. After multiple rounds of additional funding, Sequoia China has invested approximately RMB 102 million in total and currently holds a 7.11% stake. Based on the IPO valuation of RMB 42 billion, its implied market value is approximately RMB 2.98 billion, with an absolute gain exceeding RMB 2.5 billion.

Meituan is the institution that earned the highest absolute amount. Through entities such as Hanhai Information and Chengdu Longzhu, Meituan holds a combined 9.65% stake in Unitree Robotics, making it the largest external institutional shareholder. Based on the valuation at issuance, Meituan’s stake corresponds to a market value of approximately RMB 4.05 billion. Considering its cumulative investment of about RMB 400 million in the B2 round and other rounds in 2024, Meituan’s paper return exceeds RMB 3.6 billion.

Wang Xinyu, partner at Meituan Longzhu, met Wang Xing in his first week of work in 2016, but did not invest in him until 2024. At the end of 2023, Wang Xinyu traveled to the United States to research robotics labs at top universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, and discovered that these institutions, representing the world’s most advanced research capabilities, were all using Unitree’s robot dogs for secondary development. “If the best PhD students worldwide are using Unitree’s robots for cutting-edge research, how could its AI capabilities remain unsolved?” Wang Xinyu once said in a media interview.

Other investors who joined in the early or mid-stages have also reaped substantial returns. Matrix Partners entered during the B-round around a valuation of RMB 1.12 billion and currently holds 5.45%, equivalent to a market value of approximately RMB 2.29 billion, representing a paper return multiple of about 45x. Shunwei Capital first invested in January 2021 at a valuation of RMB 380 million and now holds 3.98%, equivalent to a market value of approximately RMB 1.67 billion, with a paper return multiple of about 26x. CITIC Group participated in the B2 round in 2024 and currently holds 4.49%, equivalent to a market value of approximately RMB 1.88 billion. Shenzhen Capital Group has cumulatively invested over RMB 90 million and currently holds approximately 2.55%, equivalent to a market value of about RMB 1.07 billion, with paper returns of around 10x. Shanghai Yuyi, as an employee stock ownership platform, holds 10.94% of equity, equivalent to a market value of approximately RMB 4.59 billion, among which 14 core employees hold about 5.92 million shares, with an average paper market value of nearly RMB 48.9 million per person.

In June 2025, Unitree Technologies confirmed the closing of its Series C financing round, led by funds under China Mobile, Tencent, Jinqiu, Alibaba, Ant Group, and Geely Capital, bringing its post-money valuation to RMB 12.7 billion. Calculated from its angel round valuation in 2016, the company’s valuation has increased nearly 1,000-fold over nine years. Prior to its IPO, the top ten shareholders collectively held 71.50% of the company’s shares.

For early investors, a $61 billion valuation is more than enough to exit successfully.

For the primary market, Unitree’s listing is crucial. Currently, the valuation of several leading unlisted embodied AI companies has reached RMB 20 to 30 billion. Without Unitree’s significant rise in the secondary market as an “anchor,” subsequent high-valuation projects will be affected.

The CEO of a robotics company valued at over $10 billion told Tencent Tech that, just as NIO’s stock price declined after its listing, hindering XPeng’s subsequent fundraising, “Although each company appears different, investors see you all as robotics companies.” They are all waiting for the first company in the industry to go public and see its stock price surge.

Several executives from humanoid robotics companies told Tencent Technology that the urgency to go public stems from two main reasons: first, to facilitate fundraising through联动 between primary and secondary markets, and second, often due to pressure from investors. “It may appear that these institutions haven’t reached their exit cycle yet, but once one company goes public, all subsequent companies will face immense pressure from shareholders,” said the CEO of a company preparing for an IPO in embodied intelligence components, speaking to Tencent Technology.

Some perspectives compare today's embodied AI to renewable energy in 2021, predicting that over 80% of companies will be eliminated in the future. Concerns about uncertainty in capital markets and the slow pace of real-world implementation have created widespread industry anxiety.

Investors are willing to pay KuCoin a price-to-earnings ratio of 219.23 times the offering price—far exceeding the industry average P/E of 38.56 times—betting on a future where humanoid robots fully replace human labor. However, Unitree’s current profits primarily come from robot dogs. In its prospectus, Unitree acknowledged, “The company has not yet scaled its proprietary general embodied large model for application in robotic products; if breakthroughs in brain technology do not materialize, large-scale adoption of general-purpose robots remains uncertain.”

In other words, the capital that funds its market valuation is paying for the "brain," but Unitree currently can only make money by selling the "cerebellum."

Unitree is attempting to fill this critical gap. Of the planned fundraising of RMB 6.099 billion, a portion is specifically allocated to the development of intelligent robotics models. This is the essential step in transitioning from a “hardware manufacturer” to a “full-stack embodied AI platform,” and it is key to supporting its market valuation.

If there is consensus at the primary level, that consensus has not yet achieved sustained impact at the secondary level.

In the current A-share market environment, liquidity is relatively tight, with significant capital being diverted to established value stocks and sectors such as semiconductors. What institutional investors in the primary market see as a highly attractive opportunity in “embodied AI/Physical AI,” some secondary market investors may view merely as a hardware company under high valuation pressure. A representative from a public fund told Tencent Technology that this disconnect between the two perspectives is one source of uncertainty facing Unitree following its listing.

On its first day of listing, Unitree had an extremely small free float, amplifying this emotional trading dynamic. The total number of shares offered in this public offering was 40,446,400, but the initial allocation to online investors was only 6,471,000 shares, accounting for 16% of the total offering. The remaining 84% of shares were allocated to institutional investors through strategic placements (8,089,300 shares, or 20%, locked for 12 to 24 months) and offline placements (25,886,100 shares, or 64%). Of the total post-offering share capital of 404,464,300 shares, only approximately 29,770,000 shares were available for trading on the first day, representing about 7.36% of the total share capital. Over 90% of the shares were locked up on the listing day. Under such limited supply conditions, any surge in market sentiment will significantly amplify price volatility.

The aforementioned public figure told Tencent Tech that speculation around the Yushu chain on the secondary market has consistently exhibited a typical "event-driven, spike-and-revert" pattern. He believes this level of attention has very limited sustainability: "Wherever it spikes, it tends to revert back, and cannot be sustained over the long term."

Taking the 2026 Spring Festival as an example, capital pre-emptively traded on the expectation of humanoid robots appearing on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, driving a round of speculation. On February 16, Lunar New Year’s Eve, humanoid robots from companies such as Unitree Technology made their debut on stage. The realization of this positive news quickly led to capital outflows. On February 20, the first trading day of the Year of the Horse in Hong Kong, stocks such as Yujiang and UBTECH surged sharply before rapidly retracing. Just a few trading days later, on February 24, the A-share robotics concept sector suffered a sharp decline: Yuzhou Xinchun plunged over 9% intraday and closed down 6.9%, while core component manufacturers such as Green Harmonic and Wanxiang Qianchao led the sector’s losses.

The process of Yushu Technology's pursuit of the STAR Market was also highly volatile. From its acceptance on March 20 to the approval of its IPO registration on July 2, it took only 104 days, setting the fastest review record on the STAR Market. On July 2, the China Securities Regulatory Commission approved Yushu Technology’s IPO registration; the next day, robotics-related stocks on the A-share market surged, with over 50 stocks hitting涨停 or rising more than 10%. However, during the first three weeks of July—when Yushu’s IPO registration took effect and the World Artificial Intelligence Conference was held in full swing—the CSI Robotics Index fell 12.77% in a single week, while the STAR50 Index plunged 10.5% over three days. As expectations were priced in ahead of time and new capital inflows dried up, a mass exit of funds from an over-crowded market triggered a sharp and severe price decline.

Throughout July, the total market capitalization of China's A-share market declined by over RMB 1.2 trillion, with the Shanghai Composite Index falling 6.4% cumulatively, the Shenzhen Component Index plunging 16.21%, the ChiNext Index dropping 23%, and the Sci-Tech Innovation 50 Index sliding 25.90%, marking the largest monthly decline in history. AI-related stocks experienced their most brutal month, with the ChiNext and Sci-Tech Innovation 50 Indexes falling 23% and 25.90% respectively, while the semiconductor index dropped over 33%.

In other words, Unitree's valuation benchmark does not actually depend on Unitree itself.

Several analysts following the robotics sector point out that Tesla remains the only company capable of driving the entire humanoid robotics industry, drawing a parallel to the electric vehicle sector: it was only after the mass production of the Tesla Model 3 that pure electric vehicles truly entered people’s lives, sparking a shift in public awareness of EVs in China and enabling the rise of other brands. Even Tesla, seen as the industry bellwether, faces significant uncertainty.

The release of Tesla Optimus Gen3 is expected to be delayed until the first quarter of 2026, with key upgrades focused on hand flexibility and body structure. These ongoing design changes mean that the supply chain, which has been meticulously analyzed and heavily hyped by the market, could be reset at any time. “Since the launch of the first-generation Optimus, apart from tier-one suppliers like Sanhua and Tuopu, the design materials, corresponding suppliers, and value contribution for each joint have changed multiple times. The design we see today may be entirely different from what will actually be used when humanoid robots become widely adopted,” said an analyst.

Under this context, the aforementioned public figures believe that the key to the entire humanoid robotics sector lies in whether Tesla can unlock expectations. “If Tesla fails to unlock this expectation, and its stock price continues to decline and remain sluggish, with industry progress consistently falling short of expectations, Unitree will also find it difficult to achieve an independent upward trend.”

Nevertheless, he said, not a single person watching Yu Shu’s new listing had disappeared.