Two weeks after debuting as the first humanoid-robot company on China’s A-share market, Unitree has lost more than RMB 230 billion of market value. By the close on 4 September its shares sat at RMB 530.30, giving a market capitalisation of RMB 214.5 billion, roughly half the RMB 444.9 billion peak reached on listing day. The fall took just 13 trading sessions, and a wave of criticism has followed the company out of the gate.
The accusations all point one way
Economist Fu Peng publicly noted that Unitree’s 2025 R&D spending of RMB 145 million was under a tenth of what pig farmer Muyuan invests. Former employees complained of low pay and high pressure, saying even reimbursements above RMB 100 need founder Wang Xingxing’s personal sign-off. Media then reported that sellers on Xianyu were relabelling Unitree robot-dog batteries to smuggle oversized cells onto aircraft.
Each attack hits the same nerve: extreme cost control. And each one traces back to Wang, the 90s-born Ningbo native whose frugality verges on obsession. As an undergraduate he built his first bipedal robot for RMB 200 in 2009; as a graduate student in 2015 he assembled the XDog quadruped prototype for RMB 20,000, using direct-drive motors and modular design to push cost far below what the industry thought possible.
Margins that beat Apple at its peak
The financial record backs his approach. Quadruped gross margin climbed from 43.71 per cent in 2023 to 56.72 per cent in 2025; humanoid gross margin has stayed above 60 per cent, lifting overall gross margin to 60.13 per cent, above Apple at its peak. Average selling prices tell the same story: robot dogs fell from RMB 38,300 to RMB 30,300 per unit across 2023-2025 while volumes rose from 3,121 to 23,037 units, and humanoids dropped from RMB 593,400 to RMB 166,400 while shipments went from five to 5,215.
Marketing is where the contrast with peers is sharpest. Sales expense as a share of revenue fell from 23.70 per cent in 2023 to 8.3 per cent in 2025, against roughly 23.5 per cent at UBTech, 35 per cent at Dobot and about 24 per cent for the industry. Unitree’s 2025 sales spending was RMB 141 million, of which advertising was only about RMB 60.53 million. Its breakout moment, the Yangbot dance routine on the Spring Festival Gala, was not bought with a big media budget, and rivals drew the wrong lesson, with one reportedly spending RMB 100 million on the following year’s gala slot.
What the halving actually means
None of this changes the fact that the stock halved. But the valuation math explains why. Unitree listed at 219 times earnings against an industry average near 38, closed its first day above 550 times and touched peaks above 800 times intraday. Even after the halving the multiple sits near 400, and with only 7.44 per cent of shares in free float, small trades move the price.
State media has defended the company, with the Securities Daily arguing the pullback reflects multiple factors rather than a change in fundamentals. Wang himself has asked investors to buy the stock because they believe in the value, not to chase a narrative. His own line has not moved: the ChatGPT moment for humanoid robots has not arrived yet. Ten years after building a robot for RMB 200, his question is the same, how to use the Yangtze Delta supply chain to make a good product at lower cost and earn a real profit.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robot 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/2026-09/ART-898890-12001-30701769.html.