Unitree Robotics Surges 629.44% on IPO Day, Closing at 1,100 Yuan
Nashnova编辑部
Humanoid-robot maker Unitree Robotics soared 629% to RMB 1,100 on its STAR Market debut, with retail oversubscription hitting 5,526× — the market is pricing it as China's embodied-AI anchor, but a hundred-billion valuation needs software to catch up with hardware.
A six-fold first-day pop — where did the money come from?
IPO priced at RMB 150.80; first-day close at RMB 1,100 — a 629.44% gain, a recent STAR Market record.
This means → the grey-market consensus of roughly 3.5× was blown past; pricing power sat entirely with secondary-market sentiment.
Only about 30 million shares were in free float, roughly 7.4% of total equity. In plain terms = far more money chasing far fewer shares, pushing the price to an extreme.
Retail oversubscription hit roughly 5,526×, topping the RMB 7.07 trillion subscription record set last month by memory-chip maker CXMT.
Who are the strategic investors — and why does the roster itself matter?
About 20% of the IPO was placed with strategic investors, including DeepSeek, a Tencent investment vehicle, and investment arms of PetroChina, China Southern Power Grid, and China Telecom.
DeepSeek received a 2.31% stake with a three-year lock-up; the two sides will co-develop embodied-intelligence models — AI that lets robots perceive and manipulate the physical world.
This means → the shareholder list spans AI, energy, and telecoms — Unitree secured not just capital but entry tickets to real-world deployment scenarios.
Commercialization timelines, however, remain unproven — from strategic partnership to product revenue is still a long road.
Revenue up 4×, gross margin above 60% — are the numbers solid enough?
2025 revenue hit RMB 1.7 billion, up over 330% from RMB 393 million a year earlier; net profit was RMB 278 million, with gross margin above 60%.
Humanoid-robot deliveries topped 5,500 units, ranking first globally; quadruped robots exceeded 33,000 units in cumulative sales.
At the IPO price, the price-to-sales ratio — market cap divided by revenue — was roughly 35.89×, well above the approximately 20× for Hong Kong-listed peers UBTech and Dobot.
In plain terms = the growth rate is genuinely striking, but the market's price already bakes in several years of future growth.
What does Blue Ocean Capital see — hardware or software as the key?
Blue Ocean Capital CEO Bo Ben said: "The IPO price already embeds quite optimistic expectations; long-term value hinges on whether Unitree can turn its hardware edge into an AI-capability breakthrough."
He noted that investors increasingly focus on the world models and software systems that serve as a robot's "brain," not raw hardware performance alone.
This reflects a shifting valuation logic for the robotics sector: from "who can build it" to "who can make it truly intelligent."
J.P. Morgan forecasts 1.75 million units by 2030 — what does that number mean?
J.P. Morgan analysts including Huang Ting wrote: "The mass-production inflection point appears imminent."
Their forecast: global humanoid-robot shipments rise from roughly 18,000 in 2025 → 60,000 in 2026 → 1.75 million by 2030, with China accounting for more than half of global demand.
The investment thesis rests on three pillars: accelerating commercialization + supply-chain localization + sustained policy support.
In plain terms = if this curve holds, the current hundred-billion valuation is just a starting point — but "inflection point imminent" is still a forecast, not a fact.
Where does the raised capital go — what will RMB 4.2 billion fund?
Unitree plans to deploy roughly RMB 4.2 billion of proceeds across four areas: embodied-AI model development, humanoid-robot R&D, new product programs, and capacity expansion.
This means → the bulk of spending targets software and AI, not pure production scale-up — consistent with the industry pivot Blue Ocean Capital flagged.
The first-day 629% surge was the initial stress test of the secondary market's valuation thesis; whether the premium holds will depend on how fast embodied-AI software capability materializes.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.