China’s intensifying race to commercialize humanoid robotics is officially moving to the public markets. Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou-based manufacturer widely known for its acrobatic four-legged and bipedal machines, has priced its initial public offering on the Shanghai STAR Market, securing a valuation that cements its status as a domestic hardware champion.
According to a report by CNBC, the company priced its offering at 150.8 yuan ($22.34) per share, valuing the enterprise at approximately 61 billion yuan, or $9.04 billion. The highly anticipated listing will make Unitree, formally registered as Yushu Technology, the first mainland-listed maker of humanoid robots, providing a critical benchmark for the financial viability of the embodied intelligence sector.
The pricing represents a significant premium over earlier expectations. As recently as September 2025, financial media had reported that the company was targeting a valuation of up to 50 billion yuan. The successful pricing at 61 billion yuan indicates robust institutional appetite for pure-play robotics companies, even amid broader macroeconomic headwinds in China.
Unitree is seeking to raise 6.1 billion yuan (roughly $900 million) by selling 40.45 million new shares, representing 10 percent of its enlarged share capital. With subscriptions scheduled to open on August 10, the company plans to channel the proceeds into software and hardware development, the launch of new product lines, and the construction of a massive new manufacturing base to scale production.
(Related: Unitree Robotics Opens IPO Book-Building on August 5 in First-Ever Humanoid Robot A-Share Listing)
DeepSeek Enters the Hardware Fray
Perhaps the most significant revelation from the IPO prospectus is the identity of one of Unitree’s anchor investors. Chinese artificial intelligence powerhouse DeepSeek has taken a 140.8 million yuan ($20.8 million) stake in the robotics company through the offering’s strategic placement. According to a filing cited by Reuters, DeepSeek received 933,399 shares, accounting for 2.31 percent of the total shares allocated to strategic investors. The financial investment is underpinned by a formal agreement between the two Hangzhou-based companies to jointly develop AI models specifically tailored for humanoid machines, combining DeepSeek’s algorithmic expertise with Unitree’s mechanical engineering prowess.
The partnership is highly symbiotic. DeepSeek has established itself as a formidable player in the global AI landscape, producing models that compete aggressively on price while achieving top-tier scores in coding, mathematics, and reasoning. However, its commercial success has been largely confined to text-based language models, rather than the multimodal systems required to process vision and physical spatial data.
While DeepSeek has released vision-language research models like VL2, they have not been integrated into its flagship commercial offerings. By partnering with Unitree, DeepSeek gains direct access to a fleet of physical robots and the scarce, real-world physical data they generate, essential ingredients for training the “brains” of autonomous machines. In return, the filing notes that Unitree will give preference to DeepSeek when procuring model-training services, ensuring the hardware maker has a reliable domestic software partner.
Financial Growth and the Geopolitical Shadow
Unitree’s financial trajectory illustrates the rapid maturation of the humanoid robotics market. The company’s overall revenue more than quadrupled in 2025, reaching 1.7 billion yuan. Notably, sales of humanoid robots generated 867.8 million yuan, officially overtaking the company’s famous four-legged robot dogs to become its largest business segment.
However, the path to profitability remains complex. While first-quarter revenue in 2026 climbed 68.5 percent to 422.8 million yuan, profit excluding one-off items actually fell by 52.6 percent to 40.3 million yuan, a decline the company attributed to heavily increased spending on research, development, and marketing.
Looming over this financial growth is the escalating technology war between the United States and China. The IPO is unfolding just as Washington implements new restrictions targeting foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, citing national security concerns over data collection and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities.
This geopolitical friction poses a material risk to Unitree’s international expansion. According to the prospectus, U.S. sales accounted for 13.3 percent of the company’s total revenue last year. Unitree explicitly warned prospective investors that U.S. tariffs, limits on government procurement, export controls, or the loss of existing regulatory approvals could severely disrupt its overseas growth and sever its access to imported components.
A Benchmark for Embodied Intelligence
At a $9 billion valuation, Unitree’s public market debut provides a rare, transparent benchmark for the global humanoid robotics industry. While American competitors like Figure and Tesla’s Optimus program operate either as private startups or as small fractions of massive conglomerates, Unitree offers a pure-play investment vehicle in the embodied intelligence sector. The success of the listing will test whether institutional investors believe humanoid robots are ready to transition from viral video demonstrations to scalable, profitable industrial tools.
With DeepSeek now financially and technologically invested in its success, Unitree is positioned at the exact intersection of China’s hardware manufacturing dominance and its rapidly advancing AI software capabilities. As the company prepares to ring the bell on the Shanghai STAR Market, the global technology industry will be watching closely to see if this alliance can overcome both the profound technical challenges of autonomous robotics and the increasingly hostile geopolitical environment that threatens to bifurcate the global supply chain.
