A state giant tests the exit window
Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange recently disclosed a listing: CNPC Kunlun Capital is offering 0.6349 percent of Shandong Future Robot, or 234,372 shares, at a floor price of 20 million yuan. As a pure state-industrial investor, Kunlun’s ties to the company run deep.
In May 2025, CNPC Kunlun and Shandong Future Robot signed an investment deal built on technology sharing, resource access and market coordination, chasing a combined effect greater than the sum of parts. That August, Future Robot closed a several-hundred-million yuan strategic round that included Kunlun and other industrial investors.
A small stake, not a retreat
CNPC Kunlun currently holds 10.386 percent of Shandong Future Robot, making it the second largest shareholder. The transfer is not a state withdrawal but a small equity optimisation that, on success, realises part of its paper gain while the company prepares a capital increase. At the listed floor, Future Robot is valued at about 3.15 billion yuan. The company completed its joint-stock restructuring in January.
Beyond Kunlun, China National Machinery Group, China Mobile and CICC Capital have all taken positions in Future Robot. Behind them is a genuinely rare capability: two decades deep in subsea and underwater equipment, the firm was the first in China to localise the full deep-sea robot chain end to end, breaking a long overseas monopoly.
What the company actually builds
The team is led by senior engineers Tao Zewen and Leng Jianxing, a developer of the Jiaolong manned submersible, and holds more than 160 proprietary technologies. Its 30,000 square metre smart manufacturing park and 19,000 square metre Benteng dock test base support a product line spanning work-class ROVs, subsea cable laying, deep-sea salvage, marine mining, underwater tunnelling, dredging, hull cleaning and underwater firefighting robots, plus core components such as robotic arms.
In April, Future Robot launched ExplorersVY150, a domestically developed 3,500 metre class high-power deep-sea ROV, the first in China to reach mass production. That same month its VKG1100 chain trench cutter completed sea trials in the Yellow Sea, cutting to 3 metres in 400 kPa seabed, an Asian record for power and depth.
A solid, if modest, balance sheet
The company is already profitable. It posted 2025 revenue of 149 million yuan and net profit of 18.11 million yuan; in the first half of 2026, revenue was 54.20 million yuan and net profit 1.10 million yuan. By end-June 2026, total assets were 1.154 billion yuan, liabilities just 145 million yuan and the debt ratio only 12.60 percent.
Orders are landing too: in 2026 it won Southern Grid’s subsea cable research project and a CNOOC offshore emergency-equipment purchase. Overseas, its footprint reaches Russia, Britain, France, Singapore and Saudi Arabia, with its VCG550 blower heading to a Saudi project in July. At peak, overseas work has reached 70 percent of orders.
Editor’s note: This article is based on reporting by OFweek Robot. Read the original in Chinese here: https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-08/ART-8321204-8120-30697452.html.