Analysis
Unitree Robotics set its Shanghai STAR Market IPO subscription timeline this week, with book-building opening August 5 and public subscription following August 10, targeting roughly $618 million raised at a base valuation near ¥42 billion, or about $6.2 billion.
Secondary-market expectations are already anchored well above that base figure, with some estimates running north of ¥100 billion (roughly $14.8 billion) once shares actually begin trading -- a gap that reflects how much investor appetite has built for a rare profitable name in humanoid robotics. Unitree shipped roughly 5,500 humanoid units in 2025, more than any other manufacturer worldwide, on $235 million of revenue and 60% gross margins.
“Unitree shipped roughly 5,500 humanoid units in 2025, more than any other manufacturer worldwide, on $235 million of revenue and 60% gross margins.”
The listing lands just days after the US added foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots to the FCC's national-security Covered List, a rule that effectively closes off what would otherwise be one of Unitree's largest addressable export markets right as it tries to prove out its growth story to public investors. That timing puts real pressure on the IPO to demonstrate demand can hold up on non-US markets alone.
What makes the listing significant beyond Unitree itself is that it will be the first genuinely transparent, public-market valuation benchmark anywhere in humanoid robotics -- a sharp contrast to opaque private marks like Figure's reported $39 billion valuation, which rests entirely on private funding rounds with no public trading history to test it against.
What to watch: where the stock actually prices relative to both the ¥42 billion base and the much higher secondary-market chatter, and whether the US export restriction visibly dents order flow in Unitree's post-IPO disclosures.
