China’s humanoid robot boom just produced one of the most lopsided initial public offering (IPO) scrambles in recent memory.
Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou-based robot maker best known for its dancing and martial-arts-performing humanoids, priced its Shanghai listing at 150.8 yuan ($22.35) per share. Retail investors responded by submitting valid applications for 53.64 billion shares. Only 9.707 million shares were set aside for the online tranche, leaving a final winning rate of just 0.0181%.
Roughly one in every 5,525 applicants got an allocation.
What “Embodied AI” Actually Means
Unitree and its rivals sit inside a category Chinese officials and investors now call embodied AI, artificial intelligence paired with a physical body that can sense and move through the real world, rather than software confined to a chatbot or a data center.
It is the bridge between large language models and machines that can walk a factory floor or lift a box. Beijing has made the category a national priority, and the capital has followed.
Sector investment hit 47.09 billion yuan ($6.95 billion) in the second quarter alone, more than double the prior quarter and over six times the year-ago total, according to industry tracker Xiniu.
Unitree Isn’t Even the Market Leader Anymore
The twist is that the company drawing the IPO frenzy is not the one leading the market it is going public to capitalize on. Shanghai-based AgiBot shipped roughly 8,400 humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, good for a 44% global share, according to research firm Smart Analytics Global.
Unitree shipped about 5,900 units for 31%, dropping to second place despite shipment growth of 170% year on year. AgiBot’s growth came from spreading across full-size bipedal, compact, and wheeled robot lines, while Unitree’s volume still leans heavily on its flagship G1 model sold into education and research.
AgiBot has not disclosed financials, while Unitree posted 1.7 billion yuan in revenue and roughly 591 million yuan in adjusted net profit last year, a rare profit in a sector still mostly running on venture money.
The US Is Watching From Behind
Neither company is racing alone. X Square Robot, Galbot, and EngineAI have all filed confidentially for Hong Kong listings, joining AgiBot in a queue that reflects a sector now numbering more than 100 Chinese humanoid firms.
Chinese manufacturers supplied over 97% of all humanoid robots shipped globally in the first half of the year. Washington has responded with import restrictions aimed at slowing cheap Chinese humanoids from reaching US buyers, a defensive posture that echoes a pattern seen elsewhere in tech.
Earlier this month, US chip export controls aimed at slowing Beijing’s AI sector instead helped a domestic memory chipmaker, CXMT, surge 466% in its Shanghai trading debut.
The bigger question for investors is whether shipment volume is translating into working, deployed robots rather than demo-stage inventory.
Unitree has audited profits to show for its scale. AgiBot, the market’s actual leader by shipments, has disclosed none of that. That gap in transparency, not who filed for an IPO first, is likely to matter more to anyone deciding where to put money in China’s crowded humanoid race.
Bitrue