Unitree Technology, trading under 688836.SH, opened its online IPO subscription on Aug. 10 as demand for what the source report called the “first A-share humanoid robotics stock” surged across China’s equity market. The company is pricing the deal at 219.23 times earnings, well above the industry average of 38.56 times. In offline bookbuilding, valid subscription demand exceeded 2,618 times.
Investor enthusiasm has spilled into stock forums, where posts hoping for an allocation have become common. The report said “Hope you win Unitree” has even turned into a greeting among retail traders. One investor who had followed Unitree since 2021 told Tencent Technology that he strongly agreed with the company’s hardware-selling logic and had recommended the offering to friends even though the odds of winning shares were low.
Scarce allocations have added to the frenzy
According to details in the prospectus cited by Tencent Technology, Unitree is raising about 6.1 billion yuan in the IPO, implying a post-offering valuation of roughly 61 billion yuan. The initial online retail tranche includes only 6.471 million shares. With one lot set at 500 shares, that leaves fewer than 13,000 lots available across the market.
On that basis, only about two investors out of every 10,000 valid subscription numbers are expected to win an allocation. The report estimated the winning rate at roughly 0.02% to 0.03%, making the deal harder to win than Changxin Technology, another heavily watched listing.
The payoff estimates are a major reason the stock has attracted so much attention. Based on combined calculations from several brokerages, the average first-day gain for A-share IPOs in 2026 has reached 276.04%. If Unitree were to match that average, the paper profit on one winning lot could top 200,000 yuan. If it tracked the 466.61% average first-day gain posted by STAR Market IPOs this year, the potential profit per lot could rise above 350,000 yuan.
An expensive ticket backed by rapid growth
At a three-hour online investor meeting held on Aug. 7, investors asked whether a price-to-earnings ratio above 200 times was too high and detached from fundamentals. Founder Wang Xingxing answered that “while most peers are still struggling in losses, Unitree has already turned profitable.”
Financial data in the report show revenue climbed from 159 million yuan in 2023 to 1.699 billion yuan in 2025, for a compound annual growth rate of 226.78%. Net profit excluding non-recurring items swung from a loss of more than 18 million yuan to 591 million yuan in 2025. Operating cash flow reached 670 million yuan that year, cash on hand stood at 1.419 billion yuan, and the company carried almost no interest-bearing debt.
Its business mix has also shifted sharply. Revenue from humanoid robots rose from just over 2.96 million yuan in 2023 to 868 million yuan in 2025, lifting its share of total revenue from less than 2% to 51.78% and overtaking quadruped robots as the company’s main growth engine. In 2025, Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots, ranking first globally, according to the report.
Margins moved in the same direction. The company’s blended gross margin for core operations increased from 44.22% to 60.13%, while gross margin in the humanoid robot segment reached 63.18%. The report said those metrics helped explain why investors were willing to accept a 219-times IPO earnings multiple and why offline subscription demand was so strong.
Strategic investors are paying for a future market, not just current earnings
In the strategic placement portion of the deal, three portfolios under China’s National Social Security Fund subscribed for about 141 million yuan in total. AI large-model unicorn DeepSeek was also allocated about 141 million yuan and agreed to the longest lock-up period, 36 months.
Tencent Technology said those institutional buyers were not simply paying for Unitree’s current income statement. In the report’s framing, they were also betting on the possibility that humanoid robotics could become a trillion-yuan market.
High margins face a test as education orders dominate
That margin profile, however, may not hold unchanged. In its response to regulatory inquiries, Unitree said 73.60% of humanoid robot revenue in the first three quarters of 2025 came from scientific research and education. Commercial consumer demand accounted for 17.39%, while industry applications made up 9.01%.
Even within the industry-application category, the report said the business was concentrated in use cases such as showroom guidance. Revenue tied to heavier-duty scenarios such as smart manufacturing and industrial inspection represented less than 30% of the industry-application segment.
The report’s takeaway was that humanoid robots are still being sold mainly into a niche market driven by research demand and a willingness to pay a high premium for frontier technology. Since the upper limit of the education and research market is far smaller than the industrial market, Unitree could face margin pressure as its customer base expands toward industrial buyers.
Growth slowed in 2026 as price declines outpaced cost reductions
Signs of moderation began to show in 2026. In the first quarter, Unitree posted revenue of 423 million yuan, up 68.49% year on year. That was still strong growth, but much slower than the more than 330% growth recorded for full-year 2025. First-quarter net profit attributable to the parent excluding non-recurring items came in at 40.25 million yuan, down 52.55% from a year earlier.
The company also forecast first-half 2026 net profit excluding non-recurring items in a range of 236 million yuan to 283 million yuan, which would represent a year-on-year decline of 6% to 22%.
Pricing has been under pressure too. Unitree’s average selling price per humanoid robot was about 590,000 yuan in 2023, but fell to around 160,000 yuan by 2025. Data from GGII, the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute, showed the industry average price per unit had dropped further to about 100,000 yuan in the first quarter of 2026. Cost reductions did not keep pace. From 2023 to the first three quarters of 2025, Unitree’s per-unit cost fell only from 73,200 yuan to 62,200 yuan, a decline of about 15%, squeezing gross margins in the process.
More than 2 billion yuan earmarked for the robot “brain”
Unitree said in its prospectus that it has not yet deployed its self-developed general embodied large model at scale on robot terminals. Of the roughly 6.1 billion yuan being raised, more than 2 billion yuan has been allocated to an intelligent robot model R&D project focused on embodied intelligence systems described as the robot’s “brain” and “cerebellum.”
The limitations of generalization in complex scenarios remain a live issue. During the roadshow, one investor questioned whether the company’s products were little more than “remote-controlled toys.” Wang said the remote controller remains in place as “the highest level of safety redundancy,” giving operators a final physical safeguard if an AI model makes a wrong judgment.
Primary-market gains are large, but secondary-market trading could be volatile
The listing has already created large paper gains for early backers. Variable Capital invested just 2.09 million yuan in 2018, and the report said its return multiple has now climbed above 174 times. Sequoia China invested about 102 million yuan over the years, and at the IPO price its stake is valued at close to 3 billion yuan. Meituan-affiliated entities together hold 9.65% of the company, with paper gains above 3.6 billion yuan.
For public-market buyers, the setup is different. Unitree is selling about 40.44 million shares in the offering, but only 16% of the initial allocation is reserved for online retail investors. The remaining 84% is going to institutions through strategic placement and offline inquiry.
After the offering, total share capital will stand at 404 million shares. The number expected to be freely tradable on the first day is only about 29.77 million shares, equal to 7.36% of the total. In other words, more than 90% of shares will remain locked up when the stock begins trading.
That kind of float structure can magnify early price moves. The report pointed to the run-up and retreat seen in humanoid robot concept stocks around the Lunar New Year as an example of event-driven speculation followed by a pullback. If optimistic expectations are priced in too early and fresh capital fails to follow, crowded positioning at elevated levels can trigger fast exits and sharp declines.
Benchmark hopes meet tougher scrutiny and external pressure
Primary-market investors are clearly hoping Unitree’s listing will set an A-share valuation benchmark for embodied intelligence and support richer valuations for peers such as Dobot and DEEP Robotics, both cited in the report as companies lining up for IPOs.
Still, some secondary-market trading professionals told Tencent Technology that investors are becoming more demanding. Their focus, the report said, is shifting away from technology narratives alone and toward actual commercialization and the quality of earnings.
Longer term, Unitree also faces a more complicated competitive and overseas environment. In China, Xiaomi, BYD and XPeng are moving faster into embodied intelligence with existing manufacturing capabilities and application scenarios. Overseas, Tesla’s third-generation mass-produced Optimus has been delayed until early 2026, but the report said its technology path and cost-reduction potential still carry long-range competitive weight.
Unitree also depends on overseas markets for more than 43% of revenue. Tencent Technology said a recent move by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to place advanced Chinese robots on a restriction list has added fresh uncertainty to the international expansion story for Chinese robotics companies.
The company has not yet announced an exact listing date. Based on the usual STAR Market process for new listings, the report said Unitree could begin trading as early as mid-August.