Unitree Technology puts numbers on its Shanghai IPO: rising revenue, and the American wall

Unitree Technology filed its listing prospectus on the evening of 30 July, opening the placement phase on Shanghai's STAR Market and closing a process that ran for 104 days: application accepted on 20 March, committee approval on 1 June, CSRC registration in early July. The calendar set out in the notice puts the preliminary price consultation with institutional investors on 5 August (9:30-15:00), with no cumulative auction to follow; the price will be disclosed in the issuance announcement on 7 August, with subscription on the 10th and payment by the 12th. The offering covers 40.4 million new shares, equal to 10% of post-IPO capital, with a target of 4.202 billion yuan earmarked for research and development and for production infrastructure. A multiple-voting governance structure will leave founder Wang Xingxing in control of 65.31% of voting rights, even though the founder's stake in the capital falls to 31.29%.

The financial figures in the prospectus move at two speeds: 2025 revenue reached 1.7 billion yuan, while estimates for the first half of 2026 point to revenue growth of 35% to 45%, accompanied however by a contraction in adjusted net profit of between 6% and 22%. The first-half figures are company estimates and have not yet been audited. Working back from the amount to be raised, the financial press calculates an implied valuation of roughly 42 billion yuan, a figure that diverges from the more optimistic outlook of CITIC Securities — which, as sponsor, sees potential capitalisation of between 50.6 and 55.9 billion in the six to twelve months after listing. That last estimate comes from research by the very same CITIC Securities that is running the placement, and describes the company as “globally-renowned” and “world-leading”, wording that has to be read in the light of the conflict of interest inherent in wearing the analyst's hat and the sponsor's at once.

The financing plays out against a rapidly narrowing geopolitical backdrop. On 8 June the US Department of Defense added Unitree to its 1260H list of Chinese military companies, followed on 28 July by the inclusion of foreign-made advanced robotic devices on the FCC's Covered List. The prospectus quantifies neither the exact impact of those restrictions on future revenue nor the specific weight of the US market, but the regulatory barriers turn the Chinese listing into more than a financing lever: into a forced redrawing of commercial horizons.

Artificial intelligence, borderless by nature, is being priced inside ever more rigid national perimeters: we try to put a price on a global technology while walls go up around the market it sells into. — Olya