Chinese robot maker Unitree said its US$900 million Shanghai initial public offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors, reflecting the investor fever surrounding China's first onshore-listed humanoid robot maker. The lot-winning rate for retail investors was roughly 0.018 percent after clawing back shares from the institutional tranche, the company said Monday, with about 9.8 million retail applicants competing at odds of roughly 1 in 5,500.
Numbers Behind the Frenzy
Unitree priced the offering at 150.80 yuan ($22.35) per share — about 40.45 million shares, or 10 percent of post-offering share capital — raising roughly 6.1 billion yuan and valuing the company at more than 60 billion yuan ($9 billion), or 219 times 2025 earnings and 36 times sales, per exchange filings and Xinhua. The prospectus shows revenue rising to 1.70 billion yuan in 2025 from 392.77 million yuan in 2024 and 159.13 million yuan in 2023, with net profit of 278.21 million yuan last year; first-quarter 2026 adjusted profit fell year on year to roughly 50 million yuan as R&D spending surged, according to China Reform Securities analysts cited by Further Asia.
Unitree plans to invest about 4.2 billion yuan of the proceeds across four projects: intelligent-robot model research, robot-body development, new products, and an intelligent-robot manufacturing base. Its application process was itself a record — accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 20 and approved by the listing committee on June 1, a span of 73 days.
A Sector at Inflection
The IPO lands as global humanoid shipments reached approximately 19,100 units in the first half of 2026, surging 272 percent year on year, with Chinese vendors accounting for more than 97 percent of that volume and AgiBot overtaking Unitree as the largest vendor, according to Smart Analytics Global data cited by the Global Times. China became a net exporter of industrial robots for the first time in 2025, and first-half 2026 industrial robot exports reached 6.29 billion yuan, up 18.6 percent, shipped to 141 countries and regions.
Analysts at SWS Research called the listing a milestone for the commercial value of the robotics industry, while Xiangcai Securities cautioned Unitree needs to "keep growing rapidly to justify its rich valuations." Unitree, which counts the US as a significant market, has flagged geopolitical risks including US sales restrictions in its prospectus.
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