Youdi Robotics (Wuxi) debuted on the HKEX main board on 9 September under ticker 03231.HK. It opened up 142.21 per cent, closed its first day at HK$36.68, a 153.84 per cent gain on the HK$14.45 issue price, and pushed its market cap past HK$16 billion. By 10 September it closed at HK$46.06, up another 25.27 per cent.
Behind the surge, the prospectus tells a different story. From 2023 to 2025 Youdi posted a cumulative net loss of RMB 513 million and remained unprofitable into the first quarter of 2026. The core team, oddly, comes from UTStarcom, the maker of the once-ubiquitous PAS handsets, led by founder Lu Ying.
Youdi was founded in 2013 and focuses on commercial service robots across delivery, cleaning and retail, with its own AI vision platform. Frost and Sullivan ranks it China’s third-largest commercial service-robot solution provider by 2025 revenue, with an 8.9 per cent share, and third in delivery and fourth in cleaning. By 31 March 2026 it had sold more than 114,600 robots worldwide.
That track record drew sustained capital. Backers include Legend Capital, Yunfeng, Ele.me, iFlytek, and hotel groups Huazhu and BTG. For its HK IPO, SensePower (under SenseTime) and CYGG Holding (linked to 58.com founder Yao Jinbo) came in as cornerstones for a combined US$3 million. The industrial investors are also customers: Huazhu and BTG open hotel floors and feed front-line needs, Alibaba brings local-life reach, SenseTime adds vision.
Youdi’s valuation climbed steadily: a RMB 200 million D round in December 2023 at a RMB 3.2 billion valuation, then D+ and pre-IPO rounds with local industrial funds totalling RMB 160 million, then a RMB 40 million top-up from Zhaoqing Xijiang fund in July 2025 at RMB 3.84 billion. The IPO issued 45 million H shares and raised about HK$650 million.
The company began as UTStarcom’s terminal division. As mobile killed PAS, Lu Ying spun the unit out in 2013 with RMB 1 million of registered capital and an angel cheque from UTStarcom. A communications-hardware team’s skills in product development and system integration transferred cleanly into robotics, first into low-speed autonomous driving, then into indoor service robots. This is a story less about robots than about a telecoms old guard reinventing itself as a robotics champion.
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.
Translated and adapted from OFweek Robot (https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-09/ART-8321203-8420-30702629.html).