Unitree founder raises $905 million in record humanoid robot IPO

Chinese entrepreneur Wang Xingxing, founder of humanoid robot maker Unitree, has taken his company public in Shanghai — the listing raised 6.1 billion yuan (about $905 million) for the firm and made it one of the year’s largest technology IPOs.

Investor demand outstripped the offering by more than 8,000 times — a record for Shanghai’s STAR technology board. Unitree became the first humanoid robotics company to see its shares trade on a mainland Chinese exchange, going public on Wednesday.

Wang’s company made its name with robots that dance and perform kung fu — clips of these feats brought Unitree worldwide fame after the robots appeared at China’s New Year gala in front of millions of viewers. Shortly before the IPO, the firm unveiled a new robot nicknamed “Superman,” able to jump up to two metres high and run at 12.66 metres per second.

By sales volume, Unitree is now the world’s largest maker of humanoid robots: last year the company shipped more than 5,500 machines worldwide. Beijing views the industry as a strategic priority that could reshape manufacturing, and Wang himself sat in the front row last year at a rare meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and the heads of the country’s largest technology companies.

Even so, widespread rollout of such robots remains some way off: analysts say industrial applications account for less than 10% of Unitree’s sales, with most machines used by research and educational institutions — including in Czechia, where the G1 model is used, for example, at the Czech IT Academy and Unicorn University in Prague. Wang Xingxing plans to put the IPO proceeds toward further developing the company’s technology.