Chinese robotics company Unitree has priced its initial public offering at a valuation of approximately $9 billion, becoming the country’s first mainland-listed humanoid robot manufacturer and highlighting growing investor interest in AI-powered robotics despite rising geopolitical tensions.
The Hangzhou-based company said it has priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 150.8 yuan ($22.34) per share, giving it a valuation of around 61 billion yuan ($9.04 billion).
This is according to reports on the CNBC and Investor’s Business Daily websites.
The company is selling 40.45 million new shares, representing 10 percent of its enlarged share capital, with plans to raise about 6.1 billion yuan ($900 million). IPO subscriptions are scheduled to open on August 10.
Unitree said it will use the proceeds to develop new robot hardware and software, launch additional products and expand its manufacturing capacity. Chinese AI company DeepSeek is among the strategic investors participating in the offering.
The IPO comes as the global humanoid robotics market attracts increasing attention from investors and major technology companies.
According to the company’s prospectus, revenue more than quadrupled to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, with humanoid robot sales reaching 867.8 million yuan and overtaking its well-known quadruped robots as Unitree’s largest business.
However, first-quarter 2026 profit excluding one-off items fell 52.6 percent as the company increased spending on research and marketing.
Unitree manufactures both humanoid robots and quadruped robots, with products ranging from consumer-priced robot dogs to industrial humanoid platforms.
The company has become one of China’s best-known robotics manufacturers through demonstrations of robots capable of running, dancing and performing acrobatic movements.
The listing also comes at a time of heightened US-China technology tensions. Last month, US regulators introduced new restrictions that could prevent future foreign-produced humanoid and quadruped robots from obtaining the approvals needed for sale in the United States, although Unitree has said its existing products remain authorised.
According to its prospectus, the US accounted for 13.3 percent of the company’s revenue in 2025.
Despite the $9 billion valuation, Unitree remains considerably smaller than some estimates for competitors that have yet to commercialise humanoid robots.
According to Investor’s Business Daily, analysts at Bank of America value Tesla’s Optimus business at about $30 billion, while Morgan Stanley has estimated the business could eventually be worth $180 billion.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently described Optimus as “the biggest product ever”, while acknowledging that scaling production would be “the hardest product to scale manufacturing that we’ve ever made at Tesla because everything on the robot is new”.
Unitree’s IPO is expected to provide investors with one of the first opportunities to invest directly in a publicly listed humanoid robotics manufacturer as competition intensifies between Chinese and US companies seeking to commercialise general-purpose AI-powered robots.
