Why is Unitree Robotics preparing to go public while DeepSeek is gradually fading away?

Why did Unitree Robotics get ready for an IPO while DeepSeek faded out of the public eye, even though both became popular at the beginning of the year?

Perhaps we can find some clues from Luckin Coffee.

Although these are two completely different industries, one is high - tech and the other is the food and beverage industry for the general public.

However, behind them, there is a common driving force that determines their fate - venture capital.

01

It's no exaggeration to say that without venture capital, many things we often use today might not exist.

Take Tencent as an example. In the early years, Ma Huateng launched OICQ (later renamed QQ), which grew rapidly. However, due to the soaring server costs, the company fell into a financial crisis. Ma Huateng wanted to sell QQ for 1 million yuan, but at that time, there was an Internet bubble, and he couldn't even find a buyer. If IDG and Pacific Century CyberWorks (under Richard Li) hadn't stepped in, this little penguin might have died out soon after its birth.

Similarly, there are Alibaba and SoftBank, ByteDance and Sequoia Capital, JD.com and Capital Today, etc. Venture capital can be regarded as the behind - the - scenes driving force for these companies, providing financial support when they were most in need in the early stage.

The same goes for Luckin. Some people summarize Luckin's strategy in the early stage as burning money, burning money, and burning more money, just like an Internet company.

As soon as Luckin was established, it invited various big - name celebrities to endorse, advertised crazily, and offered generous subsidies to attract customers, such as "buy two get one free" and "buy five get five free", making you feel like you'd lose out if you didn't buy.

Statistics show that in the first nine months after its opening, Luckin had a net loss of 857 million yuan, and in its second year of operation, the loss reached 1.62 billion yuan.

You know, at that time, Luckin had just been established, and perhaps the most valuable things were just a few dozen pages of PPT and the founder's persuasive words.

For venture capital institutions, investing in a company whose business model hasn't been proven yet is undoubtedly extremely risky. After a few years, there might be nothing left, and all the investment could go down the drain.

However, since its establishment, Luckin has never been short of money. Capital Today, Joy Capital, GIC Private Limited, Legend Capital, CICC, etc., were all willing to provide financing for Luckin in the early stage.

But not all brands are so lucky. Take the currently popular Pop Mart as an example.

Due to a shortage of funds in the early stage, the founder Wang Ning participated in a CCTV entrepreneurship program to seek financing. Wang Cen, a partner of Sequoia Capital, said on the spot that he would invest 100 million yuan, but he never fulfilled his promise. After being let down by multiple institutions, Wang Ning tightened the company's financing after the company's cash flow improved.

So, in comparison, Luckin can indeed be considered to have a wealthy background. At that time, venture capital was quite generous, patient, and had a high tolerance.

However, venture capital has changed now.

Today's venture capital has not only lost patience but also has a much lower tolerance for new projects. It's rare these days for a company to convince investors to invest just with a few words and some PPTs like Luckin did.

02

Why has venture capital changed?

The first reason is a shortage of funds. Both the number of financing cases and the scale of funds have been declining in recent years.

The decline in the financing scale is related to the relatively tight domestic environment on the one hand and the major competition between the East and the West on the other hand.

In the past, when domestic companies went public on the US stock market, it was an excellent exit channel for venture capital funds. After all, the listing process in the A - share market is cumbersome and full of uncertainties.

However, the financial confrontation between the East and the West has invisibly blocked the exit channels for venture capital and even directly reduced the inflow of foreign capital, which in turn affects the financing scale of venture capital.

The second important reason is the change in the players in venture capital.

Venture capital is a high - risk industry. Sometimes, when investing in 100 projects, more than 90% might fail, and the entire return depends on the remaining 10%. So in the past, private capital was the main participant in venture capital.

But in recent years, the active players in venture capital have become the "national team". The central government's investment can be said to be far ahead, and there are also a large number of local industrial guidance funds. The players at the table have changed completely.

After the "national - owned" funds began to take control, subtle changes have occurred within the venture capital industry.

On the one hand, the goals of fund management have become more complex.

Generally, there are LPs (Limited Partners, commonly known as "the money providers") and GPs (General Partners, commonly known as "the money managers") in venture capital funds.

In the past, their division of labor was clear. LPs only provided money and didn't interfere much with GPs. However, as more and more "national - owned" funds become LPs, GPs not only have to manage the money but also need to fulfill the will of LPs. Some in the industry even say that GPs have actually become employees, which affects their enthusiasm.

On the other hand, the funds also start to rank industries in terms of value.

The nature of capital is to seek profit, so the rate of return is the highest value ranking. But when the investors don't only consider economic benefits, even though capital is still profit - seeking, it has to pass through the "security check" of national narrative first.

This is reflected in venture capital investment and financing cases. Although the total number is decreasing, financing projects related to manufacturing and hard - tech are still active, and capital is flowing more into industries that conform to the top - level narrative.

This change is actually a strategy to cope with external pressure.

Whether it's the "small courtyard and high wall" policy of the white - haired old man across the ocean or the more direct containment by another figure, they have forced the East to have higher pursuits in cutting - edge industries and achieve self - control.

However, in this technological competition, the East and the West seem to have different focuses. The East attaches more importance to hard technology, while the West pays more attention to soft technology.

Liu Suhua, the president of Shenzhen Capital Group, recently gave a speech at a venture capital conference, summarizing the seven new trends in the current venture capital industry. The first one is that "the direction of entrepreneurship is moving towards hard - tech entrepreneurship".

In terms of venture capital data, in the manufacturing industry represented by various professional equipment manufacturing, the number of investment projects in the past three years has reached 19,000, with a total investment of 2.5 trillion yuan. The investment scale in the information technology industry at the software level is only one - third of that in the manufacturing industry.

03

So, going back to the initial question, why is Unitree ready for an IPO while DeepSeek is fading out? Just look at what's going on behind venture capital.

Unitree had great difficulty in raising funds at the beginning. It barely managed to get 2 million yuan in seed - round financing from private investors, and there are even chat screenshots circulating online showing that some investors didn't want to invest in Unitree.

Now, Unitree has completed 10 rounds of financing and is about to go public. Among these venture capital funds, there are also "national - owned" funds such as China Internet Investment Fund, Beijing Robot Industry Investment Fund, and China Mobile.

At the industry level, there were 14 financing events in the robotics field in just the first half of this year.

In the AI and artificial intelligence fields, although the scale of domestic venture capital ranks among the top globally, there is still a large gap compared with the leading players.

Given that the efficiency and quality of domestic graphics cards are not high, and more funds are flowing into the hard - tech manufacturing industry, it's not surprising that DeepSeek, once the spotlight's focus, has become a minor player under the "siphoning effect" of the robotics industry.

04

What impact will the shift of venture capital have?

It can only be said that blue - collar workers in the East and white - collar workers in the West have become the price of technological progress.

The labor employment data in the East is relatively simple, making it difficult to evaluate the impact of robots on employment. However, AI in the West has had a significant impact on white - collar employment.

To put it simply, workers are being replaced by AI. Especially in the information technology industry, which was the first to adopt AI, the increase in industry profits is no longer proportional to labor employment.

In the past, if a company wanted to increase profits, it needed to hire more people. But now, AI has improved work efficiency, and fewer people can create higher profits, so there's no need to hire so many.

According to foreign media statistics, in the past three years, the number of white - collar workers in US listed companies has decreased by 6.1%, and the number of senior positions has decreased by 4.6%. The popularization of AI is driving companies to do more with fewer people.

Recently, the US significantly revised its non - farm payroll data downward. Originally, the number of new jobs in June was 147,000, but after the revision, it became 14,000. One figure was so angry that he fired the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some people say that the West is fabricating data, but if it were fabricated, there would be no need for revision. They could just say whatever they wanted.

The bigger reason might lie in AI.

Artificial intelligence has quietly changed the rules of the workplace, and it has also directly made the official's previous statistical methods and models ineffective, resulting in a large deviation in errors.

Of course, from a positive perspective, the current disputes between the East and the West have temporarily reduced the possibility of a "Matrix - like" scenario, because one side has the strongest "body" and the other has the most powerful "brain", and they haven't come together yet.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhigu Business Review", author: Yu He. It is published by 36Kr with permission.