They dance, run, do somersaults, and even practice martial arts. Now they also trade on the stock market. Unitree, the company that has turned its humanoid robots and robot dogs into one of the most recognizable images of Chinese technological advancement, debuted this Wednesday on the Shanghai stock exchange and sparked euphoria among investors: its shares soared 629% as soon as they started trading. Why has this frenzy broken out?
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The answer goes beyond Unitree and points to the next great technological revolution: giving body to artificial intelligence. The so-called embodied AI seeks to develop robots capable of learning and acting in the real world, a race in which China wants to take the lead.
That is why Unitree’s stock market debut blew all expectations away. It started at 150.8 yuan per share but opened at 1,100, a jump of 629%, after raising 6.1 billion yuan (about 784 million euros) by placing around 10% of its capital. At that moment, Unitree reached a valuation of 445 billion yuan (about 57.2 billion euros). It then moderated the advance and closed the morning session at 883.87 yuan, still almost 500% above the starting price. Its founder, Wang Xingxing, holds about 20% of the company.
In just a few minutes, the company’s valuation went from 7.8 billion to 57.2 billion
What are investors buying?
More than Unitree’s current business, the stock market seems to be buying the expectation of what it could become. The big bet is that humanoid robots will follow a path similar to other technologies: quickly moving from the laboratory and demonstrations to mass production that reduces costs and allows their use in factories, warehouses, stores, or even homes.
China starts from a particularly strong position. Of the approximately 15,000 humanoid robots the sector sold worldwide during 2025, Unitree and its Chinese rival AgiBot each placed more than 5,000 units, according to data from Omdia, an international market analysis and research firm specializing in technology. The Asian giant’s advantage lies not only in developing the robots but also in its industrial capacity to manufacture them at scale.
Unitree also has something still scarce among companies in this sector: it makes money. Its revenue rose from 393 million yuan (about 50.5 million euros) in 2024 to 1.7 billion (about 218 million euros) in 2025, more than four times more, and it achieved a net profit of 278 million yuan (about 35.7 million euros). Last year it delivered more than 5,500 humanoids and also accumulates tens of thousands of units sold of its quadruped robots, the so-called robot dogs, whose virtues include accessing dangerous and hard-to-reach environments, such as fires.
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But selling robots is one thing and having them already become the workers promised by the industry is another. Much of the machines sold so far are destined for universities, research centers, demonstrations, and pilot projects, while their everyday use in factories and other commercial environments remains limited.
That is precisely the big question accompanying the stock market enthusiasm. Will humanoids be able to prove they can perform a useful, reliable, and sufficiently cheap task for hours so that a company obtains an economic return by using them? The answer is a resounding yes, but investors believe that leap is getting closer. Industry forecasts point to very rapid growth in shipments over the next few years and that China will concentrate a substantial part of that expansion.
Although Unitree competes with companies like Boston Dynamics or Tesla, which is developing its humanoid Optimus, the Chinese tech company has important allies like DeepSeek, which participates both in the capital and in the development of intelligence models for its robots.
Robots are the new technological battleground between the United States and China
Humanoid robots have become another field of technological rivalry between China and the United States, after semiconductors and artificial intelligence. In fact, the United States banned the import of new foreign models of humanoid and quadruped robots in July citing national security reasons. The measure affects future Unitree models, although previously authorized products can continue to be marketed.
This is not a minor market for the company. More than 40% of its revenue came from abroad in 2025 and the United States contributed about 13%, according to data provided by the company itself. The restrictions thus introduce an important unknown precisely when Unitree needs to expand the uses and markets for its machines.
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