Unitree Raises $904M in China's First Robot IPO

China's Unitree just IPO'd at a $9B valuation.

You can buy its humanoid robot for $16,000...

This was the mainland's first pure-play humanoid robot IPO. And investors could not get enough of it.

- Unitree raised $904M on the STAR Market
- Priced at 150.80 yuan a share
- Post-IPO valuation hit $9B
- Retail demand was oversubscribed 8,000x
- Odds of winning an allocation: 0.018%

DeepSeek and Tencent both bought in before the listing.

- DeepSeek took a stake for $20M
- It comes with a 3-year lockup
- Tencent invested through its own vehicle
- Both will help build Unitree's AI models
- State-owned energy and telecom firms invested too

Unitree Robotics shipped 5,500+ humanoids last year.

That's more than any company on earth.

But here's the twist.

Days before this IPO, the US banned new Chinese humanoid and quadruped robots from entering the country. Cybersecurity risk, the FCC said.

Unitree didn't blink. It went public anyway, and investors piled in regardless.

China doesn't need the US market to make this work.

It has its own capital, its own buyers, and its own AI models lining up behind the hardware.

Is China already winning the robot race?