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Unitree Robotics IPO Review Countdown! Breaking Down the Ice and Fire in the Prospectus of the 'First Humanoid Robotics Stock'

Author: Tanay Jaipuria, Partner at Wing

Compiled by: Felix, PANews

Editor’s note: On May 25, the Shanghai Stock Exchange website announced that Unitree Robotics’ IPO application on the STAR Market will be reviewed on June 1, with plans to raise USD 620 million as it aims to become the first humanoid robotics company listed on China’s A-share market.

Unitree Robotics’ prospectus has drawn significant attention because it offers an accurate snapshot of the current state of the robotics market.

As the world’s highest-volume producer of humanoid robots, Unitree has not only achieved profitability but also sustained rapid growth. This article will explore:

Unitree Robotics' products

Shift in revenue structure toward humanoid robots

Which companies are currently purchasing robots (and why)

Vertically integrated business model

Financial Analysis

Model-layer development goals

Unitree Robotics was founded in Hangzhou in 2016. Its founder, Wang Xingxing, is a self-taught robotics expert renowned for building his first quadruped robot in his apartment. The company currently employs 480 people, including approximately 175 R&D staff.

The company primarily sells two major product lines:

Quadruped robots (robotic dogs): Go2 (consumer and research grades), B2 (industrial grade), and A2.

Humanoid robots: H1, H2, G1, and R1. You may have seen G1 in popular online videos—it stands 1.32 meters tall and weighs 35 kilograms.

The company began expanding its international operations in 2018. Over 35% of its revenue now comes from outside China, including a substantial customer base in the U.S. academic sector.

Two years ago, Unitree Robotics was essentially a quadruped robot company, primarily selling robotic dogs. In 2023, humanoid robots accounted for just 1.9% of its revenue.

However, by the first three quarters of 2025, humanoid robots already made up more than half of its revenue.

This shift has been driven bystrong product-market fit and aggressive marketing strategies. The company’s humanoid robots have appeared on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala for two consecutive years. In 2024, Jensen Huang also showcased a Unitree robot at the GTC conference.

Unitree robots featured on CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala

This brand visibility has successfully translated into commercial and research demand—a feat most Chinese hardware companies have never truly achieved.

Compared with other companies, Unitree’s humanoid robot shipments are particularly impressive. Unitree sold approximately 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025, becoming the world’s largest seller of bipedal humanoid robots by volume. China-based AGIBot closely followed. By contrast, well-known U.S. firms such as Figure AI and Agility Robotics likely sold only a few hundred units—or even fewer.

The prospectus outlines a five-year target of achieving annual production capacity of 75,000 humanoid robots and 115,000 quadruped robots. This is roughly 14 times the projected output of humanoid robots in 2025. While ambitious, this goal also underscores how early-stage the industry currently is.

The prospectus categorizes buyers into three segments: research and education, commercial and consumer, and industrial applications.

The harsh reality is thatCurrently, the majority of demand for humanoid robots is concentrated in research and education settings.

1. Research and Education:This segment accounts for 74% of humanoid robot revenue/sales volume. Since 2022, academic buyers have been Unitree's primary customer base and remain the largest contributor to the company’s total revenue.

2. Commercial and Consumer:This segment represents 17% of humanoid robot sales volume. Most non-academic consumers purchasing these robots use them for 'display' purposes—serving as eye-catching promotional figures in retail stores, tourist attractions, performances, and exhibitions. In the first nine months of 2025, consumer segment revenue nearly quadrupled year-over-year, which sounds impressive but started from a very small base. Today, the most realistic application for a $25,000 humanoid robot appears to be standing outside a store in Shenzhen to attract customers.

3. Industrial Applications:Accounting for only 9% of humanoid robot sales, Unitree acknowledges that industrial deployment remains relatively limited due to immature technology—a reflection of the current state of the field. Within this 9%, approximately 50%–70% are used in scenarios such as corporate reception and tour guiding. Thus, overall, shipments of humanoid robots actually deployed for real-world tasks like corporate reception and inspection represent just 3%–4%.

The outlook for quadrupedal robots (robotic dogs) is clearer: only about one-third of sales come from research institutions, over 40% from commercial applications, and the remainder from industrial uses. In this segment, production-level application scenarios are already more mature. Clients include State Grid Corporation of China, China Southern Power Grid, PetroChina, Sinopec, Baowu Steel Group, and JD.com (JD.com is Unitree’s largest customer). These enterprises use quadrupedal robots for genuine daily inspections at chemical plants, substations, coal mines, pipelines, and similar facilities.

Unitree’s quadrupedal robots deployed for inspection tasks

One of Unitree Technology’s distinguishing features is its ability to independently design and manufacture most core components: high-torque motors, precision reducers, encoders, joint modules, intelligent controllers, high-precision sensors, dexterous hands, LiDAR, and cameras. According to McKinsey, actuators—comprising the motors, reducers, and joint systems that drive robot movement—typically account for 40%–60% of the total bill of materials (BOM) cost for humanoid robots.

Most companies in this field rely on external suppliers, whereas Unitree manufactures these components in-house. Externally sourced parts account for only about 14%–18% of its total costs. The only outsourced items are generic components like battery cells and flash memory, as well as differentiated components such as core computing boards.

Thanks to this approach, the per-unit manufacturing cost of quadrupedal robots dropped from approximately USD 3,300 in 2022 to around USD 1,800 by mid-2025—a 46% reduction. Over the same period, the cost of humanoid robots also fell from roughly USD 10,800 to USD 9,200.

Interestingly, as shown in the chart below, despite year-over-year declines in average selling prices for both quadrupedal and humanoid robots, the company’s gross margin has risen steadily throughout this period due to its highly vertically integrated strategy—soaring from around 45% in 2022–2023 to nearly 60% in 2025.

Note: Unitree sold only five humanoid robots in 2023, so the average selling price for that year is not representative.

Driven by strong growth in its humanoid robot business, the company’s revenue surged from USD 58 million in 2024 to approximately USD 252 million in 2025—an increase of 335%. For most of its history, international sales accounted for over 55% of revenue. In 2025, domestic revenue in China surpassed export revenue for the first time, although overseas export revenue still doubled year-over-year in absolute terms.

Gross margin is close to 60% and has continued to grow in recent years, as detailed below.

In horizontal comparison, most hardware companies have gross margins between 30% and 40%, while software companies typically achieve 70% to 80%. For a company selling physical robots, Unitree’s gross margin is exceptionally high, entirely attributable to its vertically integrated business model and the strong differentiation of its current products.

The company achieved profitability in 2024 under U.S. GAAP, with a net profit margin of approximately 18%, or nearly 35% on an adjusted basis.

Unitree Robotics is targeting a valuation of approximately USD 6 to 7 billion in this IPO.

Unitree plans to allocate nearly half of the IPO proceeds to software development. Of the USD 620 million raised, approximately USD 300 million is earmarked for AI model training over the next three years—equivalent to about USD 100 million annually dedicated to developing 'embodied large models.'

The prospectus outlines two parallel model architectures:

The first is the VLA (Vision-Language-Action) model: This model directly maps visual and language inputs into motion commands, enabling robots to generalize and handle unfamiliar tasks without manually coded instructions.

The second is the WMA (World Model + Action) model: Unitree views this as a more reliable approach. The WMA model can construct an internal simulation of physical reality. Robots predict what will happen before acting, rather than learning purely through trial and error.

Unitree has already released initial versions of both models. In September 2025, Unitree open-sourced UnifoLM-WMA-0; in January 2026, it open-sourced UnifoLM-VLA-0.

Unitree also provided a detailed breakdown of the model’s approximate expenditures, as shown below:

Unitree Technology currently holds an undisputed lead in hardware, but the company understands that to maintain a durable moat in robotics, it likely must also control the model layer—the 'brain' system that determines what a robot does and how it moves. Additionally, its software ambitions serve as a hedge against hardware commoditization (price-driven competition). Unitree has built a moat in hardware manufacturing.

However, if actuators and joint modules eventually become standardized components—much like batteries in electric vehicles—the industry’s defensive lines and competitive barriers will inevitably shift to the model layer.

Unitree Technology boasts a profitable hardware business, a solid manufacturing moat, and more humanoid robots than any other company, all offered at highly competitive prices. Yet, as reflected by the current practical applications of humanoid robots, widespread commercial deployment remains in its early stages. 'Demonstration-type' applications dominate consumer demand, while industrial deployments remain relatively limited.

Unitree Technology offers a glimpse into the current state of the robotics market, and further breakthroughs in models, hardware, and application scenarios are expected in the future.

Related reading: A review of over 30 humanoid robotics companies: Who will emerge victorious by 2026?

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