Shares of Chinese robot manufacturer Unitree gained 600% over their initial public offering price on their first trading day on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's tech-focused STAR market, often compared to the United States' Nasdaq.
Unitree shares on Wednesday traded at $125.40 on the tech-heavy Star Market index of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, surging 600% above the initial public offering price $22.30.
The stock value reached up to $163.10 during the day session before retreating slightly, but it ended the day with significant gains.
The market value of the company, which offered 40.45 million shares to the public, reached approximately $50 billion.
That was "the market firing a flare gun over China's next speculative frontier", said Stephen Innes, global strategist at Quintex Intel. "The message is pretty clear: embodied AI has become the new object of desire."
The company stated it would spend the proceeds from the initial public offering on research and development activities in smart robot models and hardware, as well as on developing new products and manufacturing infrastructure.
Founded in 2016 in the Chinese city of Hangzhou, Unitree produces four-legged and humanoid robots, along with their core components such as motors, inductors, sensors, and control mechanisms.
The company, China's leading robot manufacturer, secured a 32 percent global market share by producing over 5,500 humanoid robots in 2025.
The company's revenues reached $170 million in the first half of 2026, increasing by 48.5 percent on an annual basis.
Unitree robots
Meanwhile, robots sorting parcels and serving fried chicken enthralled visitors at a robotics expo in Beijing on Wednesday, where hundreds of companies set out their pitches for a future labour market transformed by artificial intelligence.
The Chinese government has embraced robotics as a strategic industry, and local firms have ploughed resources into the development of embodied AI.
The results of that investment were very much in evidence on the first day of the World Robot Conference, as thousands of Chinese and foreign visitors weaved through demonstrations of robots in houses, shops and factories.
"Our greatest focus is on when robots will make their way into thousands of industries and thousands of homes," said Kang Yu, a Beijing-based investor attending the expo for a third straight year. "This requires them to possess a certain level of intelligence."
At the Unitree booth, a robot made a sandwich with two slices of bread and a single piece of lettuce, pinching the leaf to assemble it.
US has blacklisted Unitree and dozens of other Chinese tech firms it says are aiding the military.
It unveiled a new humanoid robot called "Superman" on Monday, touting it as able to jump as high as two metres (6.6 feet) and to run as fast as 12.66 metres per second — faster than world record-holder Usain Bolt if sustained over a 100-metre race.
