Unitree Shares Soar in Debut After Hotly Sought Shanghai IPO

Shares in Unitree Robotics, a leading humanoid robotic maker, surged 486 percent from their offer price in the morning session of their trading debut on Shanghai's STAR Market on Wednesday.

The strong performance was in contrast to bearish trading on Chinese stock markets, with the Shanghai Composite Index losing 2 percent by noon and the tech-heavy STAR Market 50 Index tumbling 6 percent.

The Chinese mainland's hottest listing this year came after a heavily oversubscribed IPO that raised 6.1 billion yuan (US$915 million). The 1-in-5525 lottery chances of securing retail shares capture investor excitement; an aggressive price-to-earnings of ratio of 219 times captures expectations for future growth in the robotics industry.

"The performance is stronger than expected and kept relatively stable during the morning session," said Liu Chenmin, an analyst with GF Securities. "It will serve as a positive benchmark for other humanoid robotics firms that plan listings in a really emerging market."

Unitree has become the first humanoid robot maker to list on the Chinese mainland. The Hangzhou-based company is heavily investing in AI brain technology for robots, moving beyond expertise in manufacturing mechanical bodies.

Its shares surged as high as 629 percent at the open. Retail investors who managed to get one 500-lot of initial shares saw a paper profit of as much as 470,000 yuan. Unitree founder Wang Xingxing, 36, who owns roughly 30 percent of the stock, became the richest Chinese person born in the 1990s.

But the company's future is clouded by headwinds from the US, which has banned the import of some advanced robots to protect its domestic industry. About 13 percent of Unitree's revenue last year came from the US.

Its institutional investor roster includes the National Council for Social Security Fund, DeepSeek, Tencent-linked capital, PetroChina's Kunlun Capital, China Southern Power Grid, China Telecom and Citic Securities-related capital.