On China's Qixi Festival, the A-share market finally welcomed its long-awaited "first humanoid robot stock". On August 19, Unitree Technology officially listed on the STAR Market with an opening price of 1,100 yuan, surging 629.44% above its IPO price of 150.8 yuan, and its total market value briefly exceeded 400 billion yuan. Even more striking is another figure: the online subscription multiple reached 8,288 times, with a lottery rate of only 0.018%. This makes Unitree the hardest stock to win in the history of the STAR Market.
Investors who secured Unitree shares are reaping massive rewards. Based on the opening price of 1,100 yuan, each allotment yielded a paper profit of 474,600 yuan. While Unitree celebrated its listing ceremony, semiconductor investors faced a very different reality — the semiconductor sector suffered a heavy downturn on the same day. As of press time, GigaDevice, JCET Group, and Montage Technology all fell by more than 7%, while Cambricon dropped nearly 6%, creating a stark contrast of fortunes.
Looking at the longer timeline, Unitree's wealth creation story is even more remarkable. From a valuation of tens of millions at its founding a decade ago to breaking through 400 billion yuan in market value, the company has grown over a thousandfold in nine years. This capital feast has turned early shareholders, founding employees, and following institutions into billionaires en masse. Although Unitree founder Wang Xingxing has become the "richest person of the post-90s generation," an interesting scene unfolded: just before the listing bell rang, Wang was still shouting to the world — "we need people." On one side, there is paper wealth; on the other, a talent shortage. This may be the most striking contrast in the capital market this year.
Turning employees into multi-millionaires
Let's start with the fundamentals. From 2023 to 2025, Unitree's revenue surged from 160 million yuan to approximately 1.7 billion yuan, with a three-year compound growth rate of about 226.8%. In 2025, the company achieved a non-GAAP net profit of 590 million yuan, completing its turnaround. Gross margin also climbed from 44.2% to 60.1%. Notably, in 2025, humanoid robot shipments exceeded 5,500 units, securing the global No. 1 position. As of July 2026, Unitree had cumulatively produced approximately 18,000 bionic bipedal humanoid robots. However, as volume ramped up, growth visibly slowed, though profits held steady. In Q1 2026, Unitree's revenue grew 68.45% year-over-year. For the first half of the year, revenue is expected to grow 35.6% to 45.4% year-over-year, with net profit attributable to parent company projected between 258 million and 306 million yuan.
Additionally, Unitree's current valuation far exceeds the industry average. Based on the issue price of 150.8 yuan, the P/E ratio is 219 times, well above the industry average of 38 times. Clearly, the market is not applying traditional manufacturing metrics to Unitree. This rapid capital growth has also triggered a company-wide wealth creation movement, from the founder to early core employees and ordinary employee shareholders, with net worth multiplying exponentially. As founder and a post-90s entrepreneur, Wang Xingxing has become the biggest beneficiary of Unitree's listing. Based on the issue price, his personal wealth already exceeds 20 billion yuan; at the opening price, it grew another 7.3 times, with his holdings surpassing 100 billion yuan, making him the wealthiest person of the post-90s generation. The 90s-born innovator who started with a 200-yuan microcontroller a decade ago has truly changed his fate.
The early employees who accompanied him are equally enviable. Between 2017 and 2021, Unitree granted stock options to 17 employees at a subscription price of just 1 yuan per share. Now, with the issue price at 150.8 yuan, the valuation has multiplied 150-fold in nine years. Among them, 14 core employees hold 5.9266 million shares, with a book value of 894 million yuan. Eleven have already exercised their options, with an average paper gain of approximately 70.1 million yuan per person. Additionally, 171 employees participated in strategic placement through two asset management plans totaling 271 million yuan. Of these, 159 regular employees each contributed over one million yuan. Wang Xingxing himself invested 15 million yuan in follow-on investment. In Unitree's case, one workstation can literally create a millionaire.
Wang Xingxing's only regret: having too much cash
Logically, this listing-driven wealth creation should call for champagne, right? But Wang Xingxing thinks otherwise. He has been tirelessly recruiting like a "broken record." In May 2025, Wang publicly stated at an event that "the company lacks personnel across all positions," covering everything from administrative, procurement, and sales to technical, R&D, and marketing roles. He later reiterated in media interviews that "all positions are severely understaffed." In August and September 2025, Wang repeatedly emphasized the talent gap, calling it "a severe talent shortage that is the root cause of long-term high-intensity overtime and employee exhaustion," and noting that "the company is in extreme need of top-tier core talent."
To attract talent, Unitree is pulling out all the stops. At the 2025 Hangzhou offline job fair, Unitree offered monthly salaries of 50,000 to 70,000 yuan for exceptional high-end talent. In September of the same year, the company launched both campus and social recruitment simultaneously, with core positions in AI large models, visual perception, and deep reinforcement learning offering monthly salaries of 40,000 to 70,000 yuan. Based on 13 monthly payments, annual salaries reached up to 900,000 yuan. In 2026, Unitree further raised compensation, with even regular technical positions offering 20,000 to 50,000 yuan per month under a 13-14 salary system, and core experts guaranteed a minimum annual salary of 900,000 yuan. Meanwhile, according to Tianyancha and Liepin platform data, Unitree's core positions in AI algorithms, reinforcement learning motion control, and C/C++ development continue to command high salaries. Unitree's recruitment head put it bluntly: "For high-end talent, compensation has no ceiling."
AgiBot, UBTech are also frantically competing for talent
Why is Unitree in such a hurry to recruit? The answer is simple: the entire track has become fiercely competitive. In June 2026, AgiBot's technical team won the WorldArena world model championship, and the market subsequently revealed an internal incentive — a maximum individual reward of 500,000 yuan, with even interns receiving 200,000 yuan. That's not all. A month later, AgiBot announced it would issue a "mid-year special performance bonus" equivalent to one extra month's fixed salary to all formal employees. Even departing employees are eligible to receive this mid-year bonus.
UBTech has gone even further. In April 2026, this Hong Kong-listed "first humanoid robot stock" published a recruitment notice that shook the industry — seeking a global chief scientist for embodied intelligence with an annual salary starting at 15 million yuan and reaching up to 124 million yuan. The total package, including cash, benefits, and equity, directly benchmarks against the top scientist compensation at OpenAI and Meta. While posting a loss of 790 million yuan on one side and spending 124 million yuan on recruitment on the other, UBTech's move is controversial but sends a clear signal: top talent is no longer just about money.
AgiBot is handing out cash, UBTech is burning money, and Unitree is offering stock options. The three companies use different approaches, but they all point to the same fact: the talent war in the humanoid robot track has reached a white-hot stage. The data doesn't lie. Since 2026, the embodied intelligence recruitment index has surged 15-fold, with the industry's average annual salary reaching 406,000 yuan. The talent anxiety facing Unitree and its peers is essentially the result of track progression. The humanoid robot industry is now transitioning from "can we build it" to "can we scale it." In 2025, Unitree's shipment of 5,500 units is just the starting point. Orders are exploding, and while production capacity is expanding, if R&D can't keep up, algorithms can't keep up, and delivery can't keep up, everything is for nothing. Wang Xingxing has also admitted: he regrets not paying attention to AI earlier. The subtext of this statement may be that Unitree's bottleneck lies not in hardware but in the "brain." Because top talent in large models, visual perception, and reinforcement learning is scarce across the entire industry. In a sense, Unitree's listing and fundraising are also preparation for this talent consumption war.
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