The Hong Kong equity robot track is about to get a new face. On 24 August, Youdi Robotics (Wuxi) Co passed the HKEX main-board listing hearing; on 31 August it opened global bookbuilding, with trading expected on 9 September. The global offer is 45 million H shares at HK$14.45 to 19.55, implying net proceeds of about HK$685.7 million at the midpoint, with Bank of Shanghai’s YinFeng Global as sole sponsor. Two cornerstone investors are seated: SensePower, an indirect wholly-owned unit of SenseTime, and CYGG Holding, a wholly-owned unit of 58.com.
If listed smoothly, it becomes the Hong Kong market’s “first all-scenario commercial service robot stock”. The story starts in a nearly forgotten chapter of telecom history.
A robot team out of UTStarcom
Youdi’s predecessor was the terminal division of UTStarcom (China). In the 1990s UTStarcom rode the Little Smart (Xiaolingtong) phone to national fame; when mobile killed it, Lu Ying, who became UTStarcom president in 2010, led a divestiture, and in 2013 took the core terminal team out to found Youdi. This is an engineer-heavy crew. Lu, 63, graduated Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 1982, ran international trade for a decade, earned a US MBA, and held roles at Fiberxon and UTStarcom.
Few know Youdi first chased low-speed driverless vehicles and was even Nvidia’s only China partner in that field. But driverless took too long to pay; the company pivoted to indoor commercial delivery in hotels and KTV, a call that decided its survival.
Five product lines and forced full-stack R&D
After the pivot the lines spread: 2016’s “You Xiaomei” for hotel delivery and guidance, among China’s first commercialised hotel-delivery robots; 2017’s “You Xiaodi” for KTV and spa; then “You Xiaoge” for closed campuses, “You Xiaogu” for cleaning and “You Xiaofeng” for unmanned retail. Five lines cover mainstream indoor and outdoor scenarios and forced full-stack R&D, because hotel corridors, KTV rooms and campus roads differ too much for off-the-shelf vision SLAM, sensor fusion and multi-robot scheduling, all built in-house. By end-March 2026 it held 508 granted and 268 pending patents, all self-developed.
The scale line is clear: over 114,600 robots delivered to more than 5,100 customers worldwide, over 15,000 active daily running over 360,000 dispatch instructions, its own-brand robots in 600-plus Chinese cities serving over 300,000 people a day; annual customers rose from 1,793 in 2023 to 3,358 in 2025. By 2025 revenue Youdi was China’s third-largest commercial service robot supplier at 8.9 per cent share, and fourth in cleaning robots at 8.8 per cent.
The ledger: revenue climbs, losses narrow three years straight
Revenue rose from RMB 244 million in 2023 to RMB 267 million in 2024 and RMB 318 million in 2025, up 18.9 per cent; 2026 first-quarter revenue was RMB 76.5 million, up 5.7 per cent. Net loss narrowed from RMB 251 million to RMB 151 million to RMB 111 million across 2023 to 2025. Gross margin doubled from 6.9 per cent to 13.9 per cent; delivery-robot hardware margin is only about 8 per cent amid price wars, while the “soft” part lifts the whole: AI vision solutions at 15 to 19 per cent and RaaS at minus 122.2 per cent in 2023 turning positive to 5.1 per cent in 2025, with RaaS revenue RMB 49.88 million in 2025, about 5.3 times 2023, to 15.7 per cent of total.
Costs also shrank: R&D from RMB 160 million in 2023 to about RMB 70 million in 2024 and 2025; sales and marketing from RMB 75 million to RMB 32 million.
A star shareholder list and two worries
Youdi’s cap table is luxe. The Alibaba camp holds nearly 15 per cent via Ele.me operator Lazars and Yunfeng Fund, having entered around 2018 at the pivot; Legend Capital joined the 2016 A round; SenseTime’s Guoxiang Capital entered around 2021; iFlytek is also on the list. Three hotel groups, HWorld, BTG and GreenTree, hold small stakes but bind deep priority procurement. State capital includes Shanghai Chengding, Wuxi Xinshang and China Merchants Capital; in 2024 Youdi moved its HQ from Shenzhen to Wuxi, planning a RMB 1 billion base there.
In July 2025 Youdi closed a pre-IPO RMB 40 million round at a RMB 3.84 billion post-money valuation, from a YinFeng-group fund that is also the sole sponsor, a rare sponsor-as-pre-IPO backer signalling conviction.
Worries remain. Customer concentration is high: the top five contribute over 80 per cent of revenue, the largest near 40 per cent. Frost and Sullivan puts China’s 2025 commercial service robot total addressable market at RMB 78.91 billion but actual market at only RMB 2.2 billion, 2.9 per cent penetration. As of end-March 2026 cash and equivalents were about RMB 66.4 million, leaving thin buffer.
Listing is only the start of a new leg
Youdi is not alone. About 30 robot firms are pursuing listings, with HKEX 18C and the STAR Market as main exits. Ahead of it, Keenon, Pudu and GS Robotics lead global shipments; Chinese firms hold over 90 per cent of global commercial service robot shipments. IDC sees 15.1 per cent global shipment CAGR from 2026 to 2030.
The IPO proceeds: about 48.5 per cent to R&D and broader scenario coverage, about 30 per cent to business expansion and strategy.
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.