China’s backflipping robots leap to blockbuster stock market debut in latest sign of AI boom

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By Mithil Aggarwal

HONG KONG — The robotics firm behind China’s famously backflipping humanoids leapt to a remarkable stock market debut on Wednesday, with Unitree’s shares closing up 460% as investors rally behind homegrown beneficiaries of the A.I. boom.

Chinese humanoid and other robots have advanced at a breathtaking pace as Beijing competes for global tech dominance with Washington, which banned imports of new foreign-made robots last month over national security concerns. Unitree, the first humanoid robotics maker to go public on a mainland Chinese exchange, has won global attention with its humanoid and quadruped robots that can run, dance, and do backflips and kung fu. Beijing has put the advanced robotics industry front and center of its national agenda, with its latest five-year plan vowing to “target the frontiers of science and technology.” Unitree and AgiBot, another Chinese company, together accounted for more than 70% of the approximately 13,000 humanoid robots shipped globally last year, according to the Singapore-based market research firm Omdia.

Investors championing Unitree and CXMT are riding on the wave of China’s growing prowess across the entire A.I. pipeline — from memory, which is crucial in data centers, to models to robotics.

“Chinese retail buyers tend to be more driven by hype,” said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at Omdia. “But the most important thing about the IPO is the fact that this is going to be the bellwether for the humanoid robotics industry.”

Unitree’s performance going forward will be closely monitored as several other Chinese robotics companies prepare to go public.