Shares in Unitree, one of China’s largest manufacturers of humanoid robots, closed their first day of trading by more than 460%, showing strong investor appetite for China’s robotics sector.
Unitree raised around $900 million in its IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, the city’s board for technology startups, at a valuation of $9 billion. After today’s surge, Unitree is now worth around $66 billion, ahead of larger Chinese tech firms like Baidu and JD.com. It’s also worth more than the most valuable U.S. robotics company, Figure AI, which got a $39 billion valuation in a September 2025 funding round.
Investors piling into Unitree represents the hype around China’s robotics sector, which is responsible for almost all shipments of humanoid robots in the first half of the year. But analysts views are mixed on how much potential companies like Unitree have: While the startup continues to push what their robots can do—recently, beyond human performance—continued struggles on the software side, as well as a recent U.S. ban on foreign-made robots, could weigh on the company’s future.
