For two years the Chinese humanoid trade ran on paper. Terms sheets set the price, the next round ratified it, and nobody had to test whether anyone else would pay it. In October, for the first time, a seller tried to find out.
According to OFweek, citing a report from Rongzhong Caijing on 16 October, at least two sources describe a Chinese world-model unicorn urgently shopping old shares. The company is only a few years old, raised tens of billions of RMB in the first half of this year, carries a valuation in the tens of billions, and is now offering stock at 50 to 60 per cent of the last mark.
The trade that could not find a buyer
The clearest data point in the report involves a different company. An investor entered at the start of the year on a RMB 3 billion post-money valuation. By October the company’s external mark had climbed to RMB 22 billion.
The investor then tried to transfer the stake at a RMB 12 billion valuation, a discount of roughly 45 per cent. No buyer emerged. The offer, as the report notes, was a quote and not a transaction, and the RMB 22 billion figure was never validated by any public market.
That distinction matters more than the discount. A quote at RMB 12 billion tells you what one holder is willing to accept. The absence of a buyer tells you what the market believes the asset is worth. Only the second number is information.
Two warnings the market has already had
The first came from regulators. On 21 September, foreign media reported that listing plans at several Chinese humanoid companies were slowing, with supervisors focusing more closely on the relationship between valuation and revenue quality. Private-market marks on some projects were cut by 30 to 50 per cent.
The second came from Unitree. The company’s shares rose more than fivefold on their first trading day, then fell roughly 55 per cent from the peak. A single stock’s swing does not settle the private market, but it does establish a boundary: even a company that reaches the public market will not be paid forever for its imagined future.
There is a third, quieter precedent. When Jinshajiang Venture Capital wanted out of Galaxea AI, it raised the request in May 2024 and had completed the exit by September 2024, according to Galaxea’s own statement of 29 March 2025. Exits happen. What is unusual right now is that they are happening at a discount large enough to be a signal rather than a negotiation.
Why discounted blocks cascade
Venture funds sell old shares for only a few reasons. A fund is reaching its term. A manager sees a short window and wants out before the crowd. Or the manager has stopped believing in the project and would rather take a loss than hold it.
The third reason is the one that leaks. If a company’s own investor is desperate enough to accept 55 cents on the RMB, the next buyer has to ask what that investor knows. The discount is not the price of the asset. It is the price of the information asymmetry attached to it.
Each block that clears at a lower mark resets the reference for the next one. Secondary trades are thin, private and rarely disclosed, which is precisely why they move first and get reported last.
What founders should take from this
The companies most exposed are not the weakest ones. They are the ones that raised at a valuation the business cannot service within the fund cycle. A RMB 22 billion mark demands a revenue ramp that very few Chinese humanoid makers can deliver before 2028.
The healthier reading is that this is a correction in the cost of capital, not a verdict on the technology. Industrial deployments are still growing, component orders are still being placed, and the supply chain is still expanding capacity. What is being repriced is the option value that investors paid for the right to be early.
That repricing will be uneven. Companies with signed orders and gross margins will find buyers at defensible marks. Companies with demonstrations and headcount will find out what their story is worth when it is offered at a discount and still refused.
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. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-10/ART-898890-8500-30708896.html.