Unitree’s spectacular Shanghai debut has made China’s humanoid-robot ambitions impossible to ignore. It has also put a $66 billion price tag on an industry still struggling to prove that flashy machines can become a durable business.

Founded in Hangzhou in 2016, Unitree built its public profile through dancing humanoids and rapid product demonstrations, becoming a fixture of China’s push to cultivate homegrown technology champions. By 2025, it reported 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in revenue and 600 million yuan ($89 million) in profit, though much of its business remained tied to research customers rather than broad commercial deployment.¹

Investor excitement peaked on Wednesday, when Unitree shares initially jumped as much as 629% in their first day of Shanghai trading.² The stock ultimately closed more than 460% higher, after a roughly $900 million IPO, lifting the company’s value from about $9 billion to around $66 billion—above U.S. robotics rival Figure AI’s $39 billion private valuation.¹

The bull case is straightforward: Unitree has scale, prominent backers including Alibaba, Ant Group and Tencent, and what Nomura called “rapid product iteration and continuous innovation,” giving it a potential “first-mover advantage.”¹ Its recent “Superman” robot, the company says, can surpass human records in jumping and running.

The bear case is less cinematic. HSBC warned that the apparent shipment surge could be “illusionary” and said that without major advances in AI models, the current upswing was unlikely to last beyond the next one to two years.¹ The late-July U.S. ban on foreign-made robots adds another immediate risk: America accounted for 18% of Unitree’s 2025 revenue, while overseas sales overall made up nearly 45%.¹

Unitree’s debut is therefore both a vote of confidence and a demanding deadline. Markets have rewarded the promise of Chinese humanoids; now the company must show that robots can do more than dance, sprint and impress investors.