𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Shares of a Chinese company whose backflipping humanoid robots have drawn global attention rose more than sixfold on the first day of trading in Shanghai.

The stunning debut shows the scale of the investment the country’s robotics industry has been attracting.

Unitree Robotics, which unveiled a machine last week that it said could jump about two metres from standing and sprint faster than any human, was priced at 150.80 yuan, or about £15.90, a share before opening at 1,100 yuan, about £116, on Wednesday and climbing as much as 629 per cent.

The listing – which raised over 6bn yuan, about £640m and left the company valued at £40bn – is on the Star Market, the technology-focused Shanghai exchange described as China’s answer to Nasdaq, and is the first by a humanoid robot-maker on the mainland.

Unitree came to wide attention in February when its G1 robots performed backflips and martial arts at China’s Spring Festival Gala, a televised show watched by hundreds of millions. The machines moved “in a way we’d never seen before”, David Hsu, a robotics researcher, told the BBC, calling it an indication of the rise of an industry.

Unitree, founded in 2016 by the entrepreneur Wang Xingxing in Hangzhou, in eastern China, formally trades as Yushu Technology. It makes sensors, robotic arms, four-legged machines and human-like ones, and is one of the few companies in the sector making money, reporting a net profit of about £29m last year.

Of roughly 15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, Unitree and its Chinese rival AgiBot each shipped more than 5,000, far ahead of American manufacturers, according to the research group Omdia.

Unitree’s robot dog costs about £2,000 while Spot, a four-legged machine made by the American firm Boston Dynamics, is priced at around £52,000, although the two are not directly comparable because some Unitree models are much smaller.

“They are not exactly comparable because some of Unitree’s dogs are much smaller,” Harold Soh, a researcher at the National University of Singapore, told the BBC. “But the price is a big difference.”

Unitree began selling humanoid robots in 2023 and brought out its child-sized G1, priced at £10,000, the following year. Its American rivals, Tesla among them, are still to deliver a comparable product to customers.

Robotics has become one of the sharpest points of friction between Washington and Beijing. Donald Trump’s administration said in July it would ban new Chinese-made humanoid and four-legged robots on national security grounds and to protect domestic manufacturing, a move that Beijing rejected as politicising trade. The US has already restricted Chinese AI models and electric cars from its market.

Humanoid technology is seen as an answer to the labour shortage expected from China’s ageing population. State investment helped more than triple the number of Chinese robotics companies between 2020 and 2024, according to China Daily. The early market for humanoid robots is expected to be in factories and hospitals.

For now, though, experts say humanoids are still used mainly for demonstrations and research rather than actual work. They remain years away from functioning effectively in homes, according to Dr Soh, with battery life, privacy and reliability all unresolved.

In June, Morgan Stanley raised its forecast for Chinese humanoid robot shipments to 50,000 units this year, nearly double its earlier projection, and estimated the market to grow from £1.5bn now to £11bn by 2030.

Unitree’s machines are competing this week at the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing where dozens of teams are entered in running and football as well as box-opening and library book sorting. Leju Robotics and AgiBot are expected to list in the coming months.