Geek+ geht an die Börse und setzt mit dem größten Robotik-IPO an der Hongkonger Börse neue Maßstäbe. Warum haben die Anleger vor sechs Jahren so zuversichtlich in das Unternehmen investiert? – Investitionstagebuch, Ausgabe 222

On July 9th, Geek+ (Stock Code: 2590.HK) successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking Geek+ as the world's first listed company in the AMR warehouse robot market. This IPO is the largest H-share IPO of a robotics company to date and the largest non-"A+H" technology company IPO in the Hong Kong market this year.

If we tell you there's a smart robot whose job is to fetch the items you need, would you think its function is too simple?

But what if we tell you that this robot has to navigate freely in a space storing millions of items, accurately remember the location of the item you need (this positioning must be three-dimensional), walk up to it, identify it, pick it up steadily, and deliver it to the desired location? Moreover, it has to repeat this work billions or even hundreds of billions of times year after year without making a single mistake. What would you think then?

E-commerce, especially large-scale B2C e-commerce systems, is the perfect application scenario for such robots. During events like the 618 Shopping Festival and Double 11, after consumers place billions of orders, how exactly are the products of various sizes, weights, and shapes moved from the warehouse to the logistics end? After learning about the warehouse robots developed by Geek+, we can finally visualize this process.

We can even imagine what it was like in the past. Picture a scenario without smart robots, where warehouse workers have to manually pick items. In a warehouse spanning thousands or even tens of thousands of square meters, a picker has to carry a basket and search through a vast sea of goods to find a single book, a mouse, or a pen ordered by a consumer, and then pack it. How difficult and tedious this task would be! Even if they know the precise location of the item, it still takes a great deal of effort and overcoming many obstacles to complete this seemingly ordinary task.

It's easy to infer that if e-commerce product picking were still done manually, the highly efficient e-commerce logistics services like "next-day delivery" and "hourly delivery" that consumers are familiar with today would lose their foundation.

Amazon was the first company to explore the use of automated robots for product picking. In 2012, Amazon acquired Kiva Systems and began to develop the "goods-to-person" solution for e-commerce warehouses. Instead of pickers having to search for products all over the warehouse, robots can transport the shelves with the required products to the picking stations according to the orders. Then, pickers can take the products from the shelves to complete the picking process, and the products can quickly enter the packing and shipping stages. This has significantly improved the efficiency of e-commerce shipping processes.

With the rapid development of the e-commerce market and the growth of retail businesses of various enterprises, the market demand for warehouse automation and intelligence has been increasing. On July 1st, 2025, Amazon announced that the number of its deployed robots had reached one million.

Geek+ emerged in this market context.

Hardware Company, Winning with Stability

Geek+ was founded in 2015, during the rapid global development of e-commerce. Platforms such as Amazon, Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo all achieved rapid growth around this period.

At critical times like Double 11 when a large number of orders suddenly pour in, the overall stability of the product and system largely determines the market's confidence in a warehouse robot. Over the past decade since its establishment, Geek+ has undergone numerous tests under extremely high loads. During this process, various minor problems have inevitably emerged - but this is not a bad thing. By continuously solving these problems, the smart robots can keep learning and evolving, optimizing the products and systems to a new level.

Thanks to the consistently high standard of product stability, Geek+'s customer list has been continuously expanding. Initially, its customers were mainly retail e-commerce and 3PL companies, and later, the customer base expanded to the manufacturing industry. Looking at the entire market, the demand for warehouse robots has been increasing over the past decade and is expected to continue this trend in the future.

From an investor's perspective, product stability is also a core factor influencing investment decisions in the hardware field. Around 2015 - 2016, besides Geek+, many Chinese companies also saw the opportunity brought by Amazon's acquisition of Kiva (Kiva Systems, a warehouse robot manufacturing company founded in 2003 and acquired by Amazon for $775 million in 2012) and entered the development of warehouse automation and AMR autonomous mobile robot products.

At that time, the specifications and parameters of products from different companies seemed highly similar or even identical on paper. However, in long - term actual operation, various problems, big or small, gradually emerged. These hardware - related problems are often difficult to predict in the early stage of technology investment. Product stability can only be fully verified through long - term operation in real - world scenarios. In this regard, Geek+'s performance has gradually caught the attention and favor of investors.

Kwong Ying Fai, the executive director of Granite Asia, mentioned that as early as 2015 - 2016, the fund had been in contact with Geek+ and decided to invest in 2019. On the one hand, they saw that Geek+'s product capabilities were already the strongest in China. At the same time, its team showed a firm attitude and sufficient ability to expand into overseas markets. These factors formed Granite Asia's basic investment logic for Geek+ at that time.

The Core Barriers of Warehouse Robots

According to data from CIC, Geek+ has been the world's largest provider of warehouse fulfillment AMR robot solutions for six consecutive years, thanks to its outstanding technology and commercialization capabilities. It offers the most comprehensive solutions in the industry, has the largest customer base, and the most extensive global business.

As of 2024, Geek+'s business has covered more than 40 countries and regions worldwide, serving over 800 large global customers and achieving deep penetration in industries such as 3PL and retail e - commerce.

Data shows that in 2024, Geek+ achieved a revenue of 2.409 billion yuan, making it the company with the largest revenue scale among the listed companies in the Hong Kong stock market's robotics sector. From 2021 to 2024, its compound annual growth rate of revenue reached 45%, maintaining a high - speed growth. Their comprehensive advantages are continuously translating into stronger customer loyalty and repurchase motivation, with an overall customer repurchase rate of approximately 74.6% in 2024.

Besides controlling product stability, what other core barriers does Geek+ have to keep its products at the forefront of the market? Here, we can summarize three aspects: Technical strength, product strategy, and global layout.

Technical Strength: Large - scale Multi - Robot Scheduling Ability

Different from industrial robots working alone or service robots interacting at a single point, modern intelligent warehouses require hundreds or thousands of robots to operate efficiently and collaboratively in a space spanning tens of thousands of square meters. This means that the multi - robot collaborative scheduling ability and algorithms directly affect order fulfillment efficiency, throughput limit, and operating costs. They are the core technical support for customer value and thus become the deciding factor for leading companies in market competition. Especially in the complex scenarios of super - large warehouses, this technical barrier builds an insurmountable competitive moat.

Geek+'s system has the technical ability to schedule over 5000 robots in a single warehouse. In actual projects, it has successfully managed the complex collaborative operation of over 2000 robots in a single warehouse and has multiple "thousand - unit - level" projects globally. This ability has been verified in the warehouse of 3PL giant UPS. As early as the beginning of 2023, Bloomberg also reported that South Korean e - commerce giant Coupang and Geek+ jointly built a thousand - unit - level robot warehouse, which improved the warehouse operation efficiency.

Product Strategy: Full - Category Solutions

Geek+ not only serves e - commerce customers but also covers retail and manufacturing customers, with the ability to meet the different product handling needs of different types of customers.

Most e - commerce products are small items, such as mobile phones and books. In the retail scenario, products like shoes have larger volumes. When it comes to furniture handling, even larger - sized goods need to be dealt with.

Therefore, Geek+ offers the most comprehensive AMR solutions in the industry, suitable for different sizes and shapes of various products and different picking and storage methods required by enterprises. Starting from the initial "goods - to - person" solution, it has gradually developed the "container - to - person" and now the "pallet - to - person" solutions, which can meet the different scenario needs of customers in one - stop service.

Global Layout

Another important barrier lies in Geek+'s global service and delivery network. Companies such as UPS in the US, South Korean e - commerce giant Coupang, and some European companies have all increased their production efficiency by 2.4 - 2.7 times through Geek+'s intelligent robot automation solutions. This is a huge improvement for these companies.

Investors attach great importance to a company's service ability. Geek+ has built a comprehensive delivery and service system globally, ensuring high customer satisfaction. This is also the reason why 70% of its current revenue comes from overseas, and the overseas revenue growth rate remains high.

In 2019, Granite Asia invested in Geek+ because it saw a clear market demand. In this situation, choosing high - quality products and helping the company expand its international business conforms to the core investment logic for all robotics companies: there should be a clear market demand, the ability to produce world - class products, and the potential and ability for internationalization to create definite value.

Subsequent development has proven Granite Asia's accurate judgment. Today, Geek+ successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, officially becoming the world's first listed company in the AMR warehouse robot market and starting a new cycle of technology commercialization and scale expansion for the company.