Stocks surged as the first listing of the humanoid robot maker drew 9.8 million retail investors competing for just 9.7 million shares.
Shares of China and the world’s biggest humanoid robot maker, Unitree surged 629 percent, above the initial offering price of 1100 yuan in Shanghai’s trading debut on Wednesday, taking the company’s valuation to 445 billion yuan ($66 billion).
The blockbuster debut has created massive paper wealth for the early stockholders. Wang Xingxing, the company’s founder holds about 121.4 million shares, putting his net worth to about 107 billion yuan ($15.8 billion).
Meituan, Unitree’s largest outside shareholder, saw its 8.7 per cent post-IPO stake rise to about 31 billion yuan by midday, yielding a return of more than 70 times its original investment.
Unitree’s performance stood exceptional against a declining market. By the midday break, the STAR market composite had fallen 6.1 percent and the Shanghai composite had fallen by 2 percent.
The Hangzhou based company drew intense interest on the mainland exchange where 9.8 million retail investors were competing for 9.7 million of company’s shares, in the online tranche, resulting in the final allocation rate of just 0.018 percent.
Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek and tech-giant Tencent Holdings joined strategic placements alongside state-backed investors like China National Petroleum, China Southern Power Grid, China Telecom, Citic securities, and National Council for Social Security Fund.
Deep Robotics, Leju Robotics, AgiBot, X Square Robot and LimX Dynamics are some other players in the Chinese Embodied-AI sector, pursuing public listings.
Unitree, on Monday showcased its latest model, dubbed Superman, which it said could jump 2 metres (seven feet) from a standing start and reach a top running speed of 12.66 metres per second. In May, it also unveiled a rideable transforming mech, priced at 3.9 million yuan.
