China's Unitree Prices IPO at $9B Valuation, Becoming the Mainland's First Public Humanoid Robot Maker
Unitree priced shares at 150.80 yuan on Shanghai's STAR Market, raising roughly 4.2 billion yuan. Unlike most humanoid robot startups, it's actually profitable.
Unitree Robotics priced its IPO at 150.80 yuan per share on Shanghai’s STAR Market, selling 40.4 million shares — about 10% of its enlarged share capital — to raise roughly 4.2 billion yuan (around $600 million). The pricing implies a post-offering valuation near $9 billion, making the Hangzhou-based company mainland China’s first publicly traded humanoid robot maker. Final terms landed August 6, with subscriptions opening August 10.
The number that actually matters here isn’t the valuation, it’s the income statement. Unitree posted roughly 1.71 billion yuan ($235 million) in 2025 revenue, up 335% year-over-year, and it’s profitable — a rarity in a sector where most humanoid robot companies, including US rival Figure AI at a reported $39 billion valuation, generate little to no revenue. First-half 2026 growth has cooled sharply, to around 40% from 332% a year earlier, and adjusted net profit is expected to decline 6-22% year-on-year, which is the market’s way of saying the easy growth phase is over even for the category leader.
Unitree ships more humanoid and quadruped robots than any other manufacturer globally, and 85% of IPO proceeds are earmarked for R&D — a signal the company sees the current hardware as a beachhead, not the finished product. The STAR Market listing also matters strategically: it gives Beijing a homegrown, publicly-priced benchmark for humanoid robotics valuations at a moment when China is explicitly racing the US on embodied AI, not just foundation models.
For investors, Unitree’s public pricing is the first real market-set data point in a sector that’s been valued almost entirely by private funding rounds and vibes. A profitable, revenue-growing robot maker trading at $9 billion next to a pre-revenue US competitor at $39 billion is going to force some uncomfortable marks on venture portfolios holding humanoid robotics stakes. Agility Robotics is taking the SPAC route to public markets at a $2.5 billion valuation around the same time — between the two, 2026 is shaping up as the year humanoid robotics gets its first real price discovery.