Chinese robotics pioneer Unitree priced its Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market IPO at 150.80 yuan per share on August 10, aiming to raise 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in a deal that would make it the first mainland-listed humanoid robot manufacturer, Reuters and Xinhua reported. Subscriptions opened on Monday, August 11, with the offering expected to price the company at roughly $9 billion on a fully diluted basis.
DeepSeek Buys In
DeepSeek disclosed in a stock-exchange filing on August 6 that it had invested 140.8 million yuan (about $20.8 million) in the IPO as a strategic anchor, with a side agreement to jointly develop AI models for humanoid robots. The pairing pairs China's most aggressive open-weights lab with its largest humanoid robot exporter, mirroring the OpenAI-Figure alignment in the United States. "DeepSeek gets embodied AI training data; Unitree gets a frontier model partner it's not paying $200 million a year to license," one analyst told CNBC.
Why It Matters
Unitree shipped more humanoid units than any other company in 2025, with its G1 priced as low as $16,000 on Amazon — orders of magnitude below Tesla's Optimus or Figure's 02. The IPO will test whether investors are willing to underwrite a Chinese robotics champion at a Western-style multiple, and whether the proceeds — earmarked for a new 100,000-unit-per-year factory in Hangzhou — can sustain the company's price advantage as global competitors scale.
Follow-On Listings Loom
Unitree is the first of what is expected to be a wave of Chinese humanoid robot listings. UBTech, Galbot, LimX Dynamics and Fourier Intelligence are all rumored to be filing by year-end, with a combined target raise north of $3 billion. The race echoes the 2024 Chinese EV IPO surge, when BYD, XPeng and Li Auto collectively raised more than $10 billion in 18 months. "If Unitree trades well, the rest of the cohort will print within weeks," one Hong Kong banker told Reuters.
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