Industry AI Minute Newsroom 2026-08-19

The robot company opened at seven times its own offer price this morning — and it is now worth more than most carmakers

Unitree Robotics, registered as Yushu Technology, began trading on Shanghai's STAR Market on Wednesday morning as the first humanoid robot maker listed in mainland China. It priced its shares at 150.8 yuan and they opened at 1,100 — a 629 percent jump, the largest first-day gain of any new listing this year — before the gain narrowed during the session, with CNBC reporting a rise of about 542 percent. The offering raised 6.1 billion yuan, roughly 905 million dollars, against an original target of 4.2 billion, and the opening price implied a company worth about 444.9 billion yuan. Retail demand had been more than 8,000 times the shares available, a record for the exchange. Meituan, an early backer, saw a 420 million yuan stake mark up to 38.6 billion yuan on the open; founder Wang Xingxing keeps 68.8 percent of the voting rights. Between 30 and 50 other Chinese robotics companies are lining up their own listings.

Why it mattersUnitree sells real machines — a few thousand a year, mostly to laboratories, universities and companies making videos — and the market has just priced it as though the household robot already exists. That gap between shipments and valuation is the whole bet, and it is now a public number that anyone can watch move. It also sets the reference price for the queue behind it: every Chinese robotics firm still raising money will point at this open when it names its own figure. The useful thing to watch is not today's percentage but whether it survives the first earnings report, because a listed company has to publish how many robots it actually sold and to whom.

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✓ Verified · 4 sources

The robot company opened at seven times its own offer price this morning — and it is now worth more than most carmakers

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