Unitree sheds about $30 billion in four days after 487% debut

Unitree Robotics has given back roughly 200 billion yuan — about 30 billion dollars — of market value in four trading sessions, an abrupt reversal for a company that had staged one of the year's most spectacular stock market debuts.

The Chinese humanoid robot maker priced its initial public offering on Shanghai's STAR Market at 150.80 yuan a share on August 6, valuing it at about 61 billion yuan, or 9 billion dollars. When trading opened on August 19, the stock rose as much as 629 percent intraday and closed up 487 percent, briefly valuing the company at roughly 53 billion dollars. From that opening-day peak near 1,100 yuan, the shares have fallen to about 603 yuan, a drawdown of more than 40 percent.

Two structural features made a violent move in both directions likely. The offering priced at about 219 times earnings, and only a small fraction of the company's shares — reported at 7.44 percent — were freely tradable. A thin float amplifies buying pressure on the way up and offers little support on the way down.

The fundamental questions surfacing now concern how far the robots are from being a business. Unitree recorded 868 million yuan, roughly 129 million dollars, of humanoid robot revenue in 2025. Of that, 73.6 percent came from research and education customers, while industrial applications accounted for about 9 percent — meaning the bulk of demand comes from laboratories and classrooms rather than the factories and warehouses that underpin the sector's long-term projections.

The timing is pointed. Unitree's slide is unfolding in the same week that Chinese humanoid robots dominated headlines at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, where machines broke sprint records and, in at least one case, caught fire past the finish line. The gap between what the robots can do in an arena and what customers will pay for at scale is precisely what the share price is now arguing about.

This article is a market report and does not constitute investment advice.