SHANGHAI — Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou company whose dancing and backflipping robots have become the public face of Chinese humanoids, listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market today under ticker 688836 — and promptly delivered one of the wildest debuts in the exchange’s history.
Priced at 150.8 yuan, the stock opened at 1,100 yuan and closed at 883.87 yuan, up roughly 486%. The offering raised about $900 million for a 10% stake. Depending on whose math you use, that values the company somewhere between $50 billion (Reuters) and $66 billion (SCMP and Fortune) — far above any US humanoid rival.
A real business underneath the hype
Unlike most robotics IPO candidates, Unitree is profitable. Filings show 2025 revenue of 1.699 billion yuan and net profit of 590 million yuan, with humanoids now making up 51.78% of sales. The company shipped more than 5,500 humanoid units in 2025 — a volume no Western company has publicly come close to.
The catch
Three weeks before the listing, the US FCC added foreign-made mobile robots over 2 kg to its Covered List, effectively banning imports of new Unitree models into the United States on national-security grounds. The market clearly didn’t care today. Whether it matters over the next five years is the real question for shareholders.
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