--- title: "Unitree's US$590M STAR Market IPO Makes a Profitable Humanoid Maker Public" date: 2026-10-03 category: Capital & Markets site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-unitree-ipo language: en --- # Unitree's US$590M STAR Market IPO Makes a Profitable Humanoid Maker Public > Unitree cleared China's fastest-ever hard-tech IPO review and will list on the STAR Market at a ~US$5.9B valuation after posting 2025 revenue of ~US$238M. The robot that danced at the Spring Festival Gala is now lining up for a different stage. After a decade of building four-legged and two-legged machines, Unitree has cleared China's fastest-ever hard-tech IPO review. For the first time, ordinary investors can buy a slice of a company that already turns a profit selling robots. ## A decade from garage to STAR Market Unitree was founded in 2016 in Hangzhou by Wang Xingxing (王兴兴), born in 1990, who serves as chairman, CEO and CTO. It started with quadruped dogs and moved into humanoids (人形机器人) with the H1 in 2023 and the smaller G1 in 2024. The products became a fixture of Chinese state-television broadcasts, which turned the brand into a household name well beyond robotics circles. The regulator moved just as fast as the factory. Unitree's application was accepted on 20 March 2026, passed the listing committee on 1 June, and won CSRC registration on 1 July — about 104 days end to end, the quickest review under the STAR Market's pre-review mechanism and a deliberate signal that Beijing wants proven hardware champions on its boards. Wang has said publicly the IPO is the company's "gaokao," the make-or-break exam every Chinese student knows. ## The numbers that got it listed The prospectus (注册稿) tells a clean growth story: - **Revenue:** RMB 159 million (≈ US$22M) in 2023, RMB 392 million (≈ US$55M) in 2024, and RMB 1.699 billion (≈ US$238M) in 2025. - **Profitability:** it is one of the few embodied-AI firms already in the black, with deductible net profit of RMB 0.78 billion in 2024 and about RMB 5.9 billion (≈ US$82M) in 2025. - **Shipments:** more than 5,500 pure humanoids in 2025 — the company says the global lead for that category. The 2025 revenue jump came as humanoid sales overtook quadrupeds, helped by a surge in research, education and commercial orders. The company guided 2026 first-half revenue of RMB 1.052–1.128 billion (≈ US$147–158M), though it warned deductible profit would dip 6–22% year-on-year as it spends on R&D and cuts prices. ## Why investors paid ~US$5.9B Unitree plans to issue at least 40,446,400 new shares, no less than 10% of post-issue capital, and raise about RMB 4.202 billion (≈ US$590 million). At that float, the implied post-money valuation is roughly RMB 42 billion (≈ US$5.9 billion). That multiple rests on one claim: Unitree is the only humanoid (人形机器人) champion that is both shipping at scale and profitable. Most global peers — Figure, 1X, even China's own Ubtech — are still burning cash. Scarcity commands a premium. ## The capital roster The shareholder list is a snapshot of Chinese internet and industrial capital: - **Meituan (美团)** is the largest external holder at roughly 9.6%, set to book a large paper gain. - **Sequoia China (红杉中国)** backed the company as early as 2019, when the valuation was about RMB 150 million. - **Matrix Partners China (经纬)**, **Tencent**, **Alibaba**, **Ant Group**, **China Mobile** and **Geely** all came in through later rounds. Founder Wang retains control through a dual-class structure: his A shares carry ten votes each, giving him about 68.8% of voting power despite a ~23.8% economic stake. That keeps strategy in founder hands through the public era. ## What the IPO signals for the sector Two read-throughs matter beyond Unitree itself. - **A-share "first" status.** Unitree will be the first A-share company whose primary business is humanoid (人形机器人) hardware, filling a gap that was previously only represented by component suppliers. - **Money shifting from metal to mind.** Nearly half the raise — about RMB 2.02 billion — funds robot model R&D. Unitree is betting on two model routes: the "world model–action" (WMA) and "vision–language–action" (VLA) large models (大模型), an admission that the software "brain" is now the real battleground. ## Honest limitations Figures above come from the company's prospectus as reported by Shanghai Securities News, China News Service and the Guangzhou science-technology bureau; we did not independently audit them. The 2025 net profit cited is the deductible (excluding non-recurring items) figure from filings. The IPO was registered by the CSRC in July 2026 but the final issue price and listing date were not set at the time of writing, so the ~US$5.9B valuation remains an implied number. This is observatory analysis, not investment advice. ## What readers can do now - Watch the final issue price versus the ~RMB 420B implied valuation to see how much public demand confirms the private hype. - Track whether 2026 revenue stays above 35% growth even as profit dips — that is the real test of "profitable at scale." - Use Unitree's model-R&D spend as a signal for where embodied-AI talent and compute dollars are flowing next. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-capital-unitree-ipo Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.