Unitree, the most popular manufacturer of humanoid robots in China, has seen its shares slide by almost 45% since debuting on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on August 19, 2026, a downturn that brings into question whether the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence and robotics has been overvalued.

Unitree reportedly spiked 460% on its first day of trading and briefly reached a valuation of $66 billion. The price stabilized on August 25 after three consecutive down trading sessions wiped $30 billion off the peak value. To fund managers and bankers, the turnaround seemed to be less an assessment of Unitree's technology than a cautionary sign about how fast investors are drawn to the robotics story — a story the Hangzhou startup, founded in 2016 by Wang Xingxing, has come to embody for the wider industry.

A $30 billion swing that unsettled the bulls

What attracted the focus was the size of the move. Chinese IPOs delivered an average first-day return of 226% in the last three years, according to reports — what Unitree achieved is double that figure. A month before Unitree's debut, chipmaker CXMT saw its stock price rise by 466% upon listing in Shanghai, showing that the interest encompasses much more than just robotics.

"Investors were carried away by the technology revolution narrative," Dong Baozhen, chairman of Beijing asset manager Lingtong Shengtai, told Reuters, adding that "all bubbles are doomed to burst."

Abraham Zhang, chairman of the venture company China Europe Capital, said the IPO was motivated solely by a need "to pump up the shares so as to dump them later at lofty prices." He maintained that the IPO drew in common shareholders who are left to take losses, while those who benefited from the listing make money.

Profit shrank while the share price ballooned

The financial disclosures back up the skeptics. According to the report from Unitree, the company made 1.699 billion yuan — around $250 million — in revenue in 2025 and earned a gross margin of 60.13% for its core businesses, figures disclosed to the Global Times ahead of its IPO evaluation. That margin indirectly disproves the idea that humanoids are nothing but money consumers.

Still, adjusted net profit fell 53% to 40 million yuan, or about $5.95 million, in the first quarter of 2026, its prospectus showed. Unitree's machines are famous for running, dancing and performing martial-arts kicks — a fame amplified when a troupe of its humanoids danced at China's nationally televised Spring Festival Gala in early 2025 — but paying commercial work remains scarce. "It's not fair if you only look at profit," said Gao Xingkun of China Southern Asset Management, comparing robotics to the early, loss-heavy years of China's now-dominant electric-vehicle industry.

How China's listing rules can bend the price

Much of the criticism is directed at the market structure itself. Chinese exchanges screen companies before their IPO and guide the pricing of new listings, restricting how much banks can change prices in response to an upsurge in interest, Reuters said. Cryptopolitan has previously reported that state-funded investors in China have supported the humanoid industry, which means the perception remains that the rapid introduction of Unitree's IPO at the STAR Market, Shanghai's tech-focused listing board, was done with the approval of the government. That backdrop is codified in policy: in late 2023, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued guidelines calling for an initial humanoid-robot innovation system by 2025 and a world-leading industry by 2027, giving the sector explicit state direction.

Two characteristics make mispricing difficult to rectify: the limited presence of short-sellers, and the presumption among investors that regulators would protect minority shareholders. According to bankers interviewed by Reuters, the effect is that a high-priced IPO can go unchallenged.

"An IPO stock worth 10 yuan can open at 100 yuan, before sliding for years. It's a rip-off," said hedge fund manager Yuan Yuwei of Trinity Synergy.

Supply is also tight. Just 21 companies were listed in Shanghai during the first seven months of 2026, compared with 104 in Hong Kong — a market that already hosted the sector's first public test, when UBTech became the first humanoid-robot maker to go public there in December 2023 and saw its shares swing sharply in the years after.

Real shipments, unproven demand

Unitree is not a paper company. It is the world's largest maker of robot dogs and the second-biggest humanoid producer by shipments, a position built in part on aggressive pricing — its G1 humanoid went on sale in 2024 at 99,000 yuan. Counterpoint Research said Unitree shipped more than 7,000 humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, giving it 31% of the global market. Worldwide shipments topped 22,000 units over the same period, up nearly 300% year on year.

Even founder Wang Xingxing has urged patience. On August 20, one day after the IPO, the CEO said the field was nearing a "ChatGPT moment" for robot intelligence, while cautioning that the real software leap could still be two to three years away in an optimistic scenario, or five to 10 years at the latest.

That tension now defines Unitree: investors are pricing in a robotics future that the technology has not fully delivered. As a listed company, Unitree must now report its results every quarter, and each disclosure — alongside shipment tallies and any sign of paying commercial work — will test whether demand is catching up to the story, on the timeline its own founder has set.