With 190 billion yuan of its market value wiped out, did Unitree's IPO only bask in the limelight for half a day?

Before Unitree went public, an investor once envisioned this scenario: if the issue price was 150.80 yuan and the opening price did not exceed 600 yuan, he would buy in; if the opening price exceeded 600 yuan, he would hold off buying for the time being.

On August 19, Unitree opened at 1100 yuan, surging 629%, and he was "stunned". In the afternoon, the share price fell back to around 800 yuan. He still thought it was overpriced, but he hesitated and bought 200 shares anyway.

He never expected that he would become the "bagholder" in his friends' jokes. On that day, Unitree closed at 845 yuan, with a total trading volume of 23.16 billion yuan and a turnover rate of 85.28%. The next day, it closed at 687 yuan, down 18.7%; on the third day, it closed at 672.41 yuan. As of now, on the fourth trading day, its market value has evaporated by more than 190 billion yuan from its highest point.

"It's crazy, absolutely crazy, none of the people around me can understand it." A fund manager told Tencent Technology when he saw Unitree's market cap peak at 440 billion yuan, "The capital is out of its mind, those who get trapped deserve it." In his view, a reasonable valuation range should be 100 billion to 150 billion yuan.

The cold expression on Unitree founder Wang Xingxing's face on the listing day was also dug up again and became a trending topic. On August 19, at the bell-ringing ceremony, all the guests around wore smiles, while Wang Xingxing kept his lips tight and did not show a single expression the whole time.

Why is this post-90s new richest man not happy at all? A day later, netizens summed up the answer from the continuously falling Unitree share price: "He has anticipated everything long ago, so he can't smile."

Wang Xingxing does not seem to be affected by these things. On August 20, he appeared at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, and shared his thoughts on technology implementation.

He also extended his prediction for the "ChatGPT moment of embodied intelligence". A year ago, he gave the timeline as 1-2 years at the fastest and 3-5 years at the slowest. Now the timeline has been adjusted to 2-3 years at the fastest and 5-10 years at the slowest. This makes him one of the most conservative guests on industry forecasts at this year's World Robot Conference — Wang He, founder of Galaxy Universal, predicted that this GPT moment would arrive in 2028, while Gao Jiyang, founder of StarNav, believes that there may not be a GPT moment of instant popularization like what ChatGPT brought.

On the other hand, they are probably the group of people who most hope Unitree's share price can keep rising steadily. The embodied intelligence track is ushering in a concentrated moment of handing in listing results. Tencent Technology learned that nearly 50 robot companies are preparing for listing at present, and about 10 ontology manufacturers plan to submit listing applications within this year.

The CEO of a robot company with a valuation of over 10 billion yuan told Tencent Technology that it is just like the situation where Nio's share price kept falling for a period after its listing, which blocked Xpeng's subsequent financing. At present, the valuations of several leading unlisted embodied intelligence companies have reached 20 billion to 30 billion yuan. The downward shift of Unitree as the "anchor point" is unfavorable to subsequent projects.

Everyone knows that the current status of the embodied intelligence industry cannot support the valuation of the capital market, but with 190 billion yuan of market value evaporated in just a few days, Unitree's performance has intuitively put two major problems in front of the whole industry: as a hardware company that has entered the secondary market, how can it continue to tell the embodied intelligence story? For subsequent companies that are inferior to Unitree in scarcity, revenue and profit, to what extent will they be affected?

On August 24, the fourth trading day after listing, Unitree opened at 640.26 yuan. As of press time, its latest share price is 615 yuan, with a market value of 249.11 billion yuan.

01. Trade scarcity first when there are not enough tradable shares

On the listing day, as soon as the 440-billion-yuan market value came out, a robot industry practitioner excitedly posted on Moments with the caption: "The anchor point is here, we can rest assured, keep the music playing and keep dancing."

Unitree's listing is one of the most high-profile events in China's capital market in the second half of 2026. Unitree only issued 40,446,434 new shares, accounting for 10% of the total share capital after issuance, and no old shares were offered to the public. The total share capital after issuance is 404,464,340 shares. Its online offering winning rate is 0.01809759%, which is even lower than that of Changxin Technology. 9.7846 million accounts participated in the subscription, with 53.637 billion valid subscribed shares and a subscription multiple of 8288 times.

Before Unitree went public, Nomura initiated coverage of the company, giving it a "buy" rating and a target price of 370 yuan. The 370-yuan target price already means a room for increase of more than 100% compared with the issue price of 150.80 yuan. This target price is based on a forecast price-to-sales ratio of 25 times in 2027; Nomura expects Unitree's revenue in 2026, 2027 and 2028 to be 2.687 billion yuan, 5.396 billion yuan and 13.184 billion yuan respectively.

But what the capital traded on the first day was a completely different story: the first stock of humanoid robots, scarce underlying assets, limited tradable share capital, and a tech boom that no one wants to miss.

Before the close of trading on August 19, the divergence between buyers and sellers has widened. Unitree fell back from 1100 yuan to 845 yuan, and its market value dropped from 444.9 billion yuan to 341.8 billion yuan. The next day, trading volume continued to expand, and the closing price reached 687 yuan.

A partner of a USD VC that has invested in many robot companies told Tencent Technology that when the shares have not been fully unlocked and the tradable share capital and tradable shares have not changed sufficiently, price fluctuations may not reflect the real operating situation. "We should not take short-term market value as the main basis for judging the long-term value of a company."

In his opinion, Unitree's market value before share unlocking does not have much reference significance, and its fundamentals deserve more attention.

02. The gap between ideal and reality

The valuation of humanoid robots and the revenue of hardware companies are the current situation of Unitree.

Unitree's revenue, profit and operating cash flow are all at the top of the industry. From 2023 to 2025, its operating revenue increased from 159 million yuan to 1.699 billion yuan; during the same period, the gross profit margin of its main business rose from 44.22% to 60.13%. In 2025, the attributable net profit was 278 million yuan, the attributable net profit after non-recurring gains and deductions was 591 million yuan, and the net cash flow from operating activities was 670 million yuan.

The revenue structure is changing rapidly. In 2023, the revenue from quadruped robots was 119 million yuan, accounting for 75.78% of the main business revenue; the revenue from humanoid robots was 2.9671 million yuan, accounting for 1.88%. By 2025, the revenue from humanoid robots increased to 868 million yuan, accounting for 51.78%; the revenue from quadruped robots was 698 million yuan, accounting for 41.62%. In two years, Unitree transformed itself from a company that mainly sells quadruped robots into a company whose humanoid robot revenue exceeds its quadruped robot revenue.

The company stated that its pure humanoid robot shipments exceeded 5,500 units in 2025, excluding wheeled dual-arm robots; from 2023 to 2025, the cumulative sales of quadruped robots exceeded 33,000 units.

But who the humanoid robots are sold to is the key question. According to the data from Unitree's prospectus, among the humanoid robot revenue in 2025, the scientific research and education scenario accounts for 73.60%, and industrial applications account for 9.01%. Scientific research education, application development, teaching, cultural performance and intelligent services are the main application scenarios listed in the company's prospectus. Universities, developers and tech companies purchase robots, which not only brings revenue to the company, but also helps the company expand its software and hardware ecosystem. For long-term deployment in factories, production line beat, failure rate, maintenance cost, personnel replacement and repurchase all need to be calculated.

In the first quarter of 2026, Unitree's operating revenue was 423 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 68.49%; the attributable net profit after non-recurring gains and deductions was 40.2536 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 52.55%; the net cash flow from operating activities was 34.3996 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 85.65%. The company explained that the period expenses such as R&D and sales increased rapidly, and the increase in cash outflow for purchasing goods and paying period expenses was higher than the increase in cash inflow from selling goods. The company expects its operating revenue in the first half of 2026 to be 1.052 billion yuan to 1.128 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.62% to 45.41%; it expects the attributable net profit after non-recurring gains and deductions to be 236 million yuan to 283 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6.43% to 21.97%.

The net proceeds raised by Unitree this time is 5.917 billion yuan, which will be invested in R&D of intelligent robot models, R&D of robot ontology, development of new intelligent robot products, and construction of intelligent robot manufacturing base. These projects correspond to the most costly businesses for humanoid robot companies: model development, ontology development, product iteration, and production capacity construction.

The prospectus mentioned the following risks: the commercialization progress and demand growth of general robots are lower than expected, product technology cannot meet downstream demand, short-term popularity such as leasing is transmitted to the upstream and then fades away, intensified competition leads to active or passive price cuts, and production line transformation and R&D investment fail to meet expectations, all of which will affect revenue growth rate, gross profit margin and profit.

Unitree's overseas sales once accounted for more than 40% of its main business revenue during the reporting period. The company warned that overseas trade, tariffs, technology export restrictions and exchange rate changes may all affect this part of the business. For a company that grows by hardware shipments, overseas sales are not only a source of growth, but also involve supply chain, compliance and channel issues.

As a comparison, UBTECH, which is already listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, recorded an operating revenue of 2.001 billion yuan in 2025, an attributable net loss of 703 million yuan, R&D expenses of 507 million yuan, and a net cash flow from operating activities of -784 million yuan. As of August 21, its market value is about 42.235 billion Hong Kong dollars.

A number of analysts focusing on the robot sector pointed out that it is still Tesla that can drive the entire humanoid robot industry at present, for the reason of analogy with the electric vehicle industry: the real popularization of pure electric vehicles in people's daily lives did not start until Tesla's Model 3 achieved large-scale production, which triggered the cognitive change of pure electric vehicles in China, and then led to the rise of other brands.

Under this background, the key of the entire humanoid robot sector still depends on whether Tesla can open up market expectations: "If Tesla cannot open up such expectations, Tesla's own share price is also falling and in a slump, and industrial progress is constantly lower than expected, it will be difficult for these Chinese companies to achieve an independent rising trend."

03. There is impact, but it may not be that big

The view of many investors is that Unitree is a high-profile listing sample among robot companies this year, but because of its particularity as the "first stock", its capital market performance cannot be directly equated with the overall performance of the embodied intelligence industry.

A fund manager told Tencent Technology that he believes Unitree's reference significance for subsequent embodied intelligence companies' IPOs is not as great as the outside world thinks. "It will definitely become a coordinate, but a coordinate is not equal to a pricing method."

He listed different scenarios. The first scenario is that subsequent players still take Unitree as the benchmark, and then make a discounted pricing based on their own technical barriers, mass production capacity and revenue quality. The problem is that many subsequent companies do not have Unitree's profitability, shipment volume and brand premium in the first place; if Unitree keeps falling, the benchmark will shift downward, and the discount will only become more severe.

The other scenario is that subsequent players do not pursue high premiums from the very beginning, no longer try to replicate Unitree's share price on the first day of listing, but price based on their own revenue, losses, customers and delivery rhythm.

The aforementioned investor told Tencent Technology that the secondary market is affected by macro liquidity, interest rates, economic environment, peripheral markets, company financial performance and future expectations, and reflects these variables in prices more quickly; while the primary market is also affected by the scale of funds to be allocated and the number of investable tracks, the two markets will not be completely synchronized.

The popularity of the primary market for embodied intelligence does not entirely come from the short-term technical progress of a single company — investable tracks such as AI, robots and commercial aerospace are relatively concentrated, institutions still need to allocate funds, and as long as no new large track diverts funds significantly, the primary market may not cool down immediately due to the short-term weakness of the secondary market.

But he also reminded that the performance of the secondary market will indeed transmit to the primary market: when the share price performance of listed companies is good, unlisted companies in the same track usually find it easier to get financing; on the contrary, subsequent financing and valuation expectations in the primary market will also come under pressure.

Generally speaking, he believes that high valuations in the primary market will be further strengthened through financing, endorsement by well-known institutions and market attention. If high-valuation projects want to further raise their valuations in the future, they need technical achievements, product progress or commercialization proof.

(This article does not constitute any investment advice)

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tencent Technology", author: Gu Lingyu, published with authorization from 36Kr.