Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree had one of the most explosive stock market debut of the year on Wednesday. Shares of the Hangzhou-based company surged up to 629 percent before ultimately settling around 460 percent higher on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It made Unitree into the fast growing market cap story of $50 billion overnight and also a momentous milestone for China’s robotics sector Unitree, or Yushu Technology in the official lingo, sold its first shares for 150.80 yuan. The stock opened at 1,100 yuan, briefly putting the company with a value exceeding 440 billion yuan ($65.2 billion).
It closed the day at 845 yuan, still an incredible increase that gave the company a market value of around 342 billion yuan ($50.7 billion). The retail tranche was oversubscribed by more than 5,000 times. The listing comes as anthropomorphic robots transition from the viral-video event to genuine industrial and commercial tools. Unitree’s machines are now famous for backflips, kungfu and dancing routines that have been shared online worldwide. The firm said it shipped more than 5,500 anthropomorphic robots in 2025, and built a profitable business while many competitors are still in the red.
Last year’s revenue was 1.7bn yuan and net profit was 278m yuan CEO and founder Wang Xingxing though only in his mid-thirties had a surge in his net paper worth of more than $11 billion following the IPO. The company has received support from the big names in Chinese technology such as Tencent, Alibaba and AI firm DeepSeek.
The funds garnered (around 6.1bn yuan) will be used to boost R&D, increase manufacturing capacity and develop the AI models that will animate the robots. The date of listing coincides with the launch of the World Robot Conference in Beijing, and appears to suggest that China is taking embodied AI and humanoid platforms as a strategic focus.
Forseeable global humanoid robot market could grow rapidly over the coming 10 years, and today, there is only 1 publicly traded pure-play in this field, Unitree. Its nearest listed rival company UBTech is a Hong Kong-listed stock and was also in the red on the day of Unitree’s impressive entry. Not all problems have gone away.
Building blocks like the US market are now off-limits to future models after the latest regulatory hiccoughs, and significant commercial scale outside of research labs and showcase trials remains a distant prospect. But the stampede on the shares of Unitree suggests intense conviction among investors that a nexus of high-level hardware, local supply chains and state backing can Really make humongous machines a feasible new industry.