Unitree is one step closer to an IPO.
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Author | Chai Xuchen
Editor | Zhou Zhiyu
As the AI wave sweeps into the physical world, embodied intelligence is becoming the golden track where global technology and capital compete.
Recently, the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission showed that Unitree Robotics has released its IPO counseling completion report and plans to apply for an initial public offering and listing in China, with CITIC Securities as its counseling institution.
It is understood that during the IPO counseling period, CITIC Securities and Unitree determined and improved the plan for investment projects funded through this IPO, ensuring that they meet future development needs. At the same time, Unitree improved its corporate governance system, appointed three independent directors, and established board committees for audit, nomination, compensation & evaluation, and strategy. CITIC Securities stated that Unitree now has a comprehensive governance system in place that meets listed company requirements.
The completion of IPO counseling means that this robotics company, known as the "Chinese version of Boston Dynamics," is about to knock on the door of the A-share market. Unitree's IPO is all set, lacking only the final push.
Industry insiders have pointed out that choosing to list on the A-share market reflects Unitree’s strategy to focus on the domestic market and take advantage of policy incentives from boards like the STAR Market. For the A-share market, which craves "new stories," the "hard technology" and "sense of future" represented by Unitree have strong valuation appeal. Once successfully listed, its scarcity premium will be self-evident.
Looking back at the entire embodied intelligence track, from the financing winter two years ago to the current frenzy of attention, Unitree has certainly hit a golden time.
Earlier this year, Unitree robots took the stage at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, earning nationwide popularity. On the capital markets, "Unitree concept stocks" then soared, star institutions rushed to invest, shareholders viewed it as the next "DJI," and prior "old shares" of Unitree were snapped up—the tens of millions of RMB's worth of shares at the beginning of the year were gone in less than three days.
Now, when you look at Unitree's list of shareholders, it is star-studded: well-known investors such as Sequoia China, Matrix Partners China, Qiming Venture Partners, Shunwei Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, and Meituan are all listed.
The rise of Unitree is inseparable from the boost of the large model wave led by DeepSeek and ChatGPT. In the industry’s view, this year AI models solved the "brain" of robots, while companies like Unitree provided a powerful "cerebellum" (motor control) and "body" (hardware platform). The combination of AI and robotics brings sci-fi into reality and opens vast potential for the market.
Currently, the global embodied intelligence market is on the eve of an explosion. Embodied robots are seen as the next super terminal after automobiles, and capital is pouring into the track at unprecedented density. IT Juzi data shows that in the first eight months of this year, domestic robot-sector financing reached 38.624 billion RMB, which is 1.8 times last year's full-year total of 21.254 billion RMB.
The fervor for embodied intelligence is spreading fast. At Nvidia’s annual shareholder meeting in June this year, Jensen Huang emphasized that AI and robotics are the two biggest growth opportunities, representing multi-trillion-dollar potential. In addition, Seres has recently joined forces with ByteDance to enter this track. Not long ago, after Xpeng showcased its own humanoid robot at its Tech Day, its stock price surged 15%.
"With the rapid development of large models, now there is finally an opportunity for AI and robots to truly work together and land in real applications," exclaimed Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree.
People are beginning to envision robots really entering the workforce, including household jobs, factories, and services. And "getting AI to work" is exactly the key point for players like Unitree to scale up commercial applications.
Liu Yizhang, a relevant person in charge of the National-Local Co-built Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center, mentioned that nationwide humanoid robot sales were only a few hundred units in 2024, but this year’s sales are expected to leap to about 20,000 units, showing explosive growth.
By the third quarter of this year, there had been 17 orders in the robotics field exceeding ten million RMB. Among them, in July, Unitree and Zhiyuan Robotics jointly won the bid for the China Mobile (Hangzhou) Information Technology company’s humanoid bipedal robot OEM project, with a total value of 124 million RMB.
The continued appearance of large orders is a strong signal that the embodied intelligence industry is entering the first year of commercialization. A source told Wallstreetcn that while the technical route battle in robotics has not ended, the competition focus has shifted to commercial ability—mass production speed and scenario implementation efficiency have become decisive.
With the advantage of technological leadership, Unitree saw an explosion of sales in this round of the robotics boom and has become one of the few truly profitable players in the industry.
According to Unitree, taking 2024 as an example, sales of quadruped robots, humanoid robots, and component products accounted for about 65%, 30%, and 5%, respectively. Of these, about 80% of quadruped robots were used in research, education, and consumer fields, while the remaining 20% were applied in industrial areas such as inspection and firefighting; humanoid robots were all used in research, education, and consumer sectors.
According to Wang Xingxing, Unitree’s annual revenue last year exceeded 1 billion RMB. A source close to Unitree shareholders told Wallstreetcn that since 2020, Unitree’s financial reports have shown annual profits, and last year's net profit was close to 100 million RMB.
Being among the top profitable players is a key reason why capital is embracing it. And right now, the robotics track is highly competitive: Zhiyuan Robotics, Galaxy Universal, Variable Robotics, Fourier Intelligence, UniXAI and other players are being backed by investors. Unitree also needs to leverage capital power to enter more real business scenarios and achieve leapfrog development in order to remain at the final table.
For Unitree, the IPO is not the end but the beginning of a Long March. The funds raised from the listing will be its ammunition for going "all in" on the humanoid robot endgame. It vows to make the market see a future in which robots deeply participate, coming at an unprecedented speed.
And Unitree itself is now standing at the crest of the wave.
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