Unitree Soars 629% in Shanghai’s Biggest Debut of 2026

Shares in Unitree Robotics opened at 1,100 yuan on Shanghai’s STAR Market on Wednesday, 629% above the 150.80 yuan at which the Chinese humanoid maker had priced its IPO. It is the largest first-day gain for any new mainland listing this year, and it makes Unitree the first publicly traded humanoid robot company in mainland China.

The offering was oversubscribed to a degree that set a STAR Market record. Unitree sold 40.45 million shares — about 10% of its enlarged capital — raising roughly 6.1 billion yuan ($905 million) against an original target of 4.2 billion. Investors bid for more than 8,000 times the stock on offer, with some 9.8 million retail accounts chasing 9.7 million available shares.

At the open the company was worth about 445 billion yuan (US$66 billion), cooling to roughly 357 billion yuan by midday. Founder Wang Xingxing, 36, holds around 121.4 million shares — more than 107 billion yuan on paper — and controls 68.8% of the voting rights. Early backer Meituan saw its 8.7% stake reach roughly 31 billion yuan by midday, a return of more than 70 times its original investment.

The rest of the market went the other way in the same session: the STAR Market Composite Index fell 6.1% and the Shanghai Composite dropped 2%, and rival robotics names did not rally in sympathy. That makes the debut a bet on Unitree specifically rather than a re-rating of the sector — which is unusual, because the sector is what most of the money in Chinese robotics has been chasing.

Formally Hangzhou Yushu Technology, Unitree built its name on quadruped and humanoid machines whose athletic demonstrations — backflips among them — have done much of the company’s marketing for it. Converting that recognition into a listed balance sheet gives it capital at a moment when the humanoid field is spending heavily on manufacturing capacity rather than research alone.

Plenty more is queued behind it. Somewhere between 30 and 50 Chinese robotics companies are preparing public listings in Hong Kong, following peers such as EngineAI, which filed there in June. Unitree’s first day sets an uncomfortable benchmark for all of them: it priced sensibly, then left 629% on the table in a single morning.