On 10 August Unitree opened its public offer at 150.8 yuan a share, a market value near 61 billion yuan, and cleared the STAR Market review in 73 days, the fastest tech-board listing this year. Behind it sat a star cast of backers, Meituan, Tencent, Alibaba and Xiaomi among them. Missing from the winner’s circle was the earliest large outside investor: DJI.
In 2018 DJI’s fund agreed to subscribe 2.56 million yuan of new capital for about 1.53 million US dollars (10.13 million yuan), a post-money value near 60 million yuan, taking roughly 17 per cent and becoming Unitree’s second-largest external shareholder after founder Wang Xingxing. The stake was never paid in, and in April 2019 DJI cut the capital entirely and left the register. Priced at the offer, that stake would have been worth about 3.7 billion yuan. DJI’s own account of a 2019 anti-corruption sweep, 45 staff and losses above 1 billion yuan, froze its investment desk and stalled the deal.
The Wang Xingxing link runs deeper. He joined DJI after his master’s in 2016, then quit when a video of his XDog robot went viral overseas and buyers and backers appeared. An angel, Yin Fangming, put 2 million yuan in for 15 per cent, a 13.3 million yuan value; that stake later reached about 2.8 billion, some 140 times. Meituan now holds 9.65 per cent as the largest external backer, Sequoia China 7.11 per cent, Xiaomi 4.42 per cent, Tencent 0.6 per cent and Alibaba 0.45 per cent.
DJI is also a robotics venture factory. Alumni founded Fengjiang (agri-robots), Bambu Lab (2024 revenue 5.5 to 6 billion yuan, net near 2 billion, margin above 30 per cent) and EcoFlow (2024 revenue near 8 billion, about 35 per cent of portable storage). The lesson for European observers is about timing and conviction: the best roboticip returns went not to the strategic giant next door but to the small backers who stayed, and a compliance freeze at the wrong moment can cost a 3.7 billion yuan seat. The talent that built one drone leader is now building China’s robot leaders, one exit at a time.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.