TLDR
- Unitree shares fell 45% after surging 460% on their Shanghai debut last week
- The stock briefly valued the company at $66 billion before losing over 200 billion yuan in market cap
- First-quarter adjusted profit dropped 53% as costs rose and commercial orders remain limited
- China’s IPO pricing system is under scrutiny after retail investors absorbed heavy losses
- Analysts say the selloff reflects a gap between robotics hype and real-world deployment
Unitree, China’s best-known humanoid robot maker, has become the latest cautionary tale in the country’s tech investment scene. Shares of the Hangzhou-based company have fallen roughly 45% from their intraday peak of 1,100 yuan, reached just days after its Shanghai debut on August 19.
Unitree New Robot Preview: “Superman” Breaking the Limits of Humanity🥳
Standing high jump 2 m, top speed 12.66 m/s (0.85 m leg length)
Surpassing the standing high jump and running speed records of all humans around the world
This new machine has only been in development for a… pic.twitter.com/12i80ITU6p— Unitree (@UnitreeRobotics) August 17, 2026
The stock closed Monday at 603.08 yuan, down from 845 yuan on its first trading day. Even after the selloff, shares still trade at about four times the 150.80 yuan IPO price.
The debut itself was extraordinary. Nearly 9.8 million retail accounts competed for roughly 9.7 million available shares. The stock opened 629% above its issue price and closed its first session up 460%, briefly pushing the company’s valuation to around 445 billion yuan, or $66 billion.
By Monday’s close, that figure had dropped to approximately 244 billion yuan, wiping out more than 200 billion yuan in market value in under a week.
Weak Profits Behind the Hype
The selloff comes as investors look more closely at Unitree’s finances. Revenue grew more than fourfold to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, and the company was profitable at the time of listing.
But more recent numbers are less encouraging. Adjusted net profit fell 53% to about 40 million yuan in the first quarter of 2026, as costs increased.
Founder Wang Xingxing acknowledged at the World Robot Conference that humanoid robots are not yet ready for broad factory deployment. He said they remain less efficient than humans at simple tasks and struggle to adapt across different jobs.
HSBC analysts had warned before the listing that the recent rise in humanoid shipments could be hard to sustain without major improvements in AI capability.
IPO System Under Fire
The wild price swings have renewed questions about how China prices new listings. Regulators play a large role in vetting and setting IPO prices, and the STAR Market’s limited initial float can create extreme scarcity when demand is high.
Restricted short-selling leaves few tools for skeptical investors to push back on overheated debuts.
Venture capitalist Abraham Zhang said the structure allows major shareholders to sell at inflated prices while retail investors absorb the losses. “Those who won the IPO shares walked away with smiles,” he said.
One retail investor who lost money wrote online that supporting Chinese innovation “cannot be built on the pains of retail investors.”
Unitree is not alone. Shares of CXMT, a DRAM memory chipmaker, surged 466% on their Shanghai debut last month before facing similar pressure.
Despite the selloff, Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, making it one of the world’s largest suppliers. Nomura analysts say its rapid product development gives it a first-mover advantage in the sector.
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