Wang Xingxing made a stunning debut, and Unitree Robotics took the world's first place.

At the World Robot Conference, the Robot Doing Yangge Dance at the Spring Festival Gala Wins the First Gold Medal

The speed at which Chinese humanoid robots are moving towards the future is much faster than expected.

Recently, at the 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games, two robots from Unitree took the first and third places in the 1500 - meter event. The second - placed "Tianjiao" robot is from Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center Co., Ltd.

Among them, Lingyi Technology, a wholly - owned subsidiary of Unitree Technology, won the gold medal with a time of 6 minutes and 34 seconds.  

Image source: Weibo  

The Unitree robot doing Yangge dance at the Spring Festival Gala. Image source: Weibo

After the competition, Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree Technology, said in an interview with the media that the robot that won the 1500 - meter track and field event is the same one that appeared at the Spring Festival Gala and is also the first robot made by Unitree Technology after its establishment. He believes that this coincidence is very meaningful.  

The scene of Unitree robot H1 in the 1500 - meter race. Image source: Yicai Global

Before the competition, a video of H1 doing a 100 - meter sprint warm - up on the track was circulated online. Many netizens said, "It seems that this speed can outrun Bolt."

Image source: Weibo

According to the operator of the Unitree Technology team on the spot, the robot participating in this competition has not undergone any special modifications or upgrades, which shows that it can not only dance but also has good sports performance. The reason for choosing this robot instead of the slightly smaller G1 is that H1 is taller, with more powerful motors, larger strides, and thus faster speed.

In addition, there were also many small and cute robots appearing at the competition site.

Image source: Weibo

Of course, some robots also provided "laughing points" for the audience.

Image source: Weibo

In fact, this is not the first time that Unitree Technology's robots have participated in track and field competitions.

In April this year, at the "First Global Humanoid Robot Half - Marathon" in Beijing Yizhuang, the G1 robot from Unitree Technology fell to the ground at the starting moment, which sparked a lot of discussions on the Internet.  

Image source: Weibo

In the face of this unexpected situation, Unitree Technology quickly issued a statement. The statement pointed out that Unitree has not participated in any competitions recently and has mainly been busy preparing for the live - broadcast of humanoid robot fighting.

"Our G1 humanoid robots have been sold to many customers around the world since last year and have been in use for a long time. So in this marathon, there were also several independent teams using our robots. For example, our customers participated in the competition with their own algorithms, so there were many of our robots on the site. Since there are several independent teams using them, the performance of the robots varies greatly under different operations or developments. Please don't misunderstand."  

Image source: Unitree Technology

In other words, a participating team used the G1 robot from Unitree Technology and optimized and controlled it with its self - developed algorithm. This algorithm is different from Unitree Technology's original algorithm, so we can't simply attribute the fall to Unitree Technology's product itself.

It is worth mentioning that as a middle - distance running event, the 1500 - meter race has different requirements for humanoid robots compared with the previous marathon.

The 1500 - meter race focuses more on the explosive power, speed optimization, and joint transmission efficiency of humanoid robots, while the half - marathon emphasizes endurance, energy management, stability, and durability.

As the tallest humanoid robot under Unitree, H1 is about 1.8 meters tall. With its height advantage, H1 can run with larger strides and is faster than humanoid robots of ordinary size.

Of course, many people outside the industry think that the development of robots is still far from people's daily lives and question their practical value.

In response, Wang Xingxing said, "Our greatest wish and what we are currently doing is to make robots work. It can do various actions and help people with various tasks. However, at present, the technological level is not sufficient for large - scale application either at home or in factories. It's a good thing that there is progress year by year, which can make people have more understanding and tolerance for the industry."

Perhaps every technology that is powerful enough to "start a prairie fire" is just a spark at the beginning, just like the Internet in the past.

Unitree Technology Aims to Be the "First Humanoid Robot Stock"

When it comes to embodied intelligence, Unitree Technology is undoubtedly one of the most - watched companies in the domestic humanoid robot field at present.

The outside world's attention to it comes from two aspects: sales volume and the progress of its listing.

In terms of sales volume, a third - party platform revealed that in 2024, Unitree Technology sold 23,700 robotic dogs annually, accounting for about 69.75% of the global market share; in the field of humanoid robots, Unitree Technology's delivery volume exceeded 1500 units in 2024.

In 2025, Wang Xingxing said publicly that Unitree Technology's G1 is probably the humanoid robot with the highest global shipment this year, and the Go2 is the quadruped robot with the highest global shipment in the past few years and this year.  

Unitree Technology's G1. Image source: Weibo

In terms of listing, Unitree Technology plans to submit its listing application documents in October 2025 and aims to be listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. If everything goes smoothly, it is expected to become the "First Humanoid Robot Stock" on the A - share market.

Why is Unitree Technology's listing so attractive to the outside world? It is because it has an impact not only on the company itself but also on the embodied intelligence industry.

On the one hand, for Unitree or any company, being listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board paves the way for subsequent financing and market expansion.  

Image source: The official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission

In this regard, Wang Xingxing said bluntly, "The company has been established for 9 years. I regard listing as the college entrance examination. Listing means that the enterprise is moving towards a more mature stage of management and operation."

In addition, before listing, Unitree Technology has completed 10 rounds of financing. In June this year, Unitree Technology completed its Series C financing and won the favor of a group of business giants such as Tencent Investment, Jinqiu Fund, Alibaba, Ant Group, and Geely Capital. It is undoubtedly the "pioneer" in the capital of the current humanoid robot industry.  

Image source: Tianyancha

On the other hand, if it is successfully listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, its significance for the domestic humanoid robot field is self - evident.

It is worth mentioning that Unitree Technology is also one of the few enterprises in the industry that have achieved continuous profitability.

Wang Xingxing revealed at the 2025 Summer Davos Forum that Unitree Technology's annual revenue in 2024 exceeded 1 billion yuan and has achieved profitability for five consecutive years since 2020, with a stable gross profit margin of over 50%.

In contrast, most players in the industry are still in the "money - burning" stage, so Unitree Technology's achievements are even more prominent.

Of course, it is still a bit hasty to conclude that "the humanoid robot industry is on the right track" based on the above.

Compared with hardware, the greater challenge lies in the shortage of large - scale models. In this regard, Wang Xingxing said bluntly, "The biggest problem is that the AI for embodied intelligence is not sufficient."

Traditional large - scale models rely on massive Internet text data for training, while embodied intelligence requires interaction data from the physical world, which is smaller in quantity and more difficult to obtain.

Wang Xingxing also pointed out, "In the field of large - language models, when there is enough good data, the model can be trained better and better. However, in the field of embodied intelligence, it is found that in many cases, the collected data cannot be used. At present, people pay relatively little attention to the model and too much attention to the data."  

Image source: Weibo

Perhaps this is also the reason why humanoid robots have not been widely applied on a large scale at present.

Of course, there are also some reference cases in the industry.

In March this year, ZhiYuan Robotics released the first general embodied base model - the ZhiYuan Qiyuan Large - scale Model, which pioneered the Vision - Language - Latent - Action (ViLLA) architecture. This architecture consists of VLM (Multimodal Large - scale Model)+MoE (Mixture of Experts) and can learn from human videos to achieve rapid generalization with small samples.

In the future, with the breakthrough of technologies such as simulation training and lightweight models on the edge side, we cannot deny the potential of embodied intelligence, which may become the next - generation AI infrastructure after large - scale models.

Perhaps the "ChatGPT moment" for robots is coming in the near future. Let's wait and see.

This article is from the WeChat public account "Internet Headlines". Author: Song Hui. Republished by 36Kr with permission.