Unitree's 629% Shanghai Debut Turns Humanoid Robotics Into a Public Market Story

Unitree Robotics' blockbuster listing, the largest first-day gain of any listing on the STAR Market this year, gives investors their first direct stake in China's humanoid robot race, and validates a thesis Vertex Ventures China backed from the company's earliest days.

Embodied AI has spent the past three years as one of venture capital's most heavily funded and most heavily debated categories. Billions of dollars have flowed into humanoid robot developers on the promise that machines capable of walking, gripping and adapting to unstructured environments will eventually reshape manufacturing, logistics and services. What the category has lacked, until now, is a public market test of that thesis: a listed company whose commercial numbers, not just its demo reels, investors can hold up to scrutiny.

Unitree Robotics supplied that test this week. The Hangzhou-based robot maker opened 629% above its IPO price on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's STAR Market, its shares jumping from an offer price of 150.80 yuan to 1,100 yuan. The debut valued the company at roughly 445 billion yuan (US$66 billion) at the open, making Unitree the first humanoid robot maker to list on a mainland Chinese exchange. The IPO raised 6.1 billion yuan, above its original 4.2 billion yuan target, with retail demand for the offering running many times over the available allocation.

What sets Unitree apart from much of the humanoid robotics field is that it arrived at its listing already profitable. The company reported 1.7 billion yuan in revenue for 2025, more than four times the prior year's figure, alongside a net profit of 278 million yuan. It shipped over 5,500 humanoid robots during the year, on top of an established base of quadruped robots that first brought the company commercial traction in industrial inspection and research applications. Founder Wang Xingxing has said the company's early attempts at humanoid robots stalled years ago and were only revived once the underlying AI models matured enough to support them.

Unitree's debut lands as China treats embodied AI as a strategic industrial priority, with humanoid robotics named among the technologies the country is backing at a national level. The listing gives public investors a rare direct read on how that policy support, rapid iteration and early commercial deployment translate into a balance sheet, at a moment when much of the rest of the sector is still working out how to move from demonstration to deployment.

Vertex's perspective

Vertex Ventures China backed Unitree from its pre-A+ round in 2020, ahead of the humanoid pivot that would come to define the company's next chapter. The fund's support has spanned Unitree's development across the full robotics stack, from algorithms to motors, an approach that has become central to how the company differentiates itself as the sector scales.

Choon Chong Tay, Founder and Managing Partner at Vertex Ventures China, said: "We backed Unitree since its pre-A+ round in 2020 because we recognised its expertise across the entire robotics stack, from algorithms to motors. As humanoid robot deployments accelerate, Unitree's vertically integrated R&D and manufacturing capabilities create a defensible moat that will define industry leadership. This milestone validates our thesis that companies that master both AI and hardware integration will reshape how industries operate."

Unitree has said IPO proceeds will go toward embodied AI model development, humanoid robot research, new product lines and manufacturing capacity, the same combination of software and hardware investment that Vertex Ventures China has backed since 2020. With the STAR Market now offering a live pricing signal for the category, Unitree's next test will be converting that public market conviction into the sustained commercial deployment the wider humanoid robotics industry has yet to prove out.