Unitree's IPO priced at a $9 billion valuation — and the margins explain the $4,900 robot
Unitree priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO on August 6 at 150.8 yuan per share (~$22.30), valuing the company at 61 billion yuan — roughly $9 billion. Subscriptions open August 10, making it the first mainland-listed humanoid robot maker. Strategic investors taking allocations under three-year lockups include DeepSeek, Tencent, China Telecom, China Southern Power Grid and CNPC.
The number worth sitting with isn’t the valuation — it’s the margin. Unitree reported 2025 revenue of 1.7 billion yuan and net profit of 591 million yuan, a gross margin above 60%. H1 2026 guidance points to revenue growing as much as 45.4%, even as net profit could dip up to 22% on higher R&D spend.
Why this matters for anyone pricing a robot: a company selling the R1 AIR for $4,900 and the G1 for $13,500 at 60%+ gross margin is not running a loss-leader land grab. Those prices are apparently profitable at Unitree’s manufacturing scale — which is a different story from Western humanoid makers still quoting $20,000–30,000 “targets” with no shipping product and no disclosed unit economics. It also suggests the current price floor across Unitree’s Go2 line and its humanoids isn’t artificially low and waiting to snap back up post-IPO — but the rising R&D line suggests proceeds are funding new hardware and software, not an imminent second round of price cuts.
One caveat: pricing an IPO is not the same as trading it. The 61 billion yuan figure is what institutional and retail subscribers agreed to pay before shares list, not a market-tested valuation. We’ll know more once trading opens and the stock finds a level on its own.
Sources
Primary sources referenced in this article. Prices in the tables come from the live index and carry their own as-of dates.
- Unitree Robotics: Unitree G1 — official store page (shop.unitree.com)
- Unitree Robotics: Unitree R1 — official store page (shop.unitree.com)
- Unitree Robotics: Unitree Go2 — official store page (shop.unitree.com)