Unitree's wild stock ride triggers warning from CEO

Unitree's wild stock ride

Unitree Robotics IPO'd on the Shanghai STAR Market on August 19, priced at ¥150.80 per share. On its first day, the stock opened 629% above its IPO price, briefly hitting a $66 billion market cap before closing around $53 billion. 

Within days, it had lost more than 60% of its debut-day value.

Then came October 19. 

Unitree surged 16.15% in a single session, pushing its market cap above 200 billion yuan. The stock climbed another 6.07% the next day before retreating 2.1% on October 21, closing at ¥515 per share ... still more than three times its IPO price.

This three-session rally through October 20 triggered a formal abnormal-trading disclosure.

What lit the fuse

Two things happened the week of October 19. 

China's Ministry of Commerce and 8 other government departments published guidance naming robots explicitly among smart products requiring expanded domestic supply, targeting household services and commercial logistics. 

Shortly after, Tesla disclosed that its Optimus V3 humanoid was "readied for mass production," sending China's A-share humanoid supply chain into limit-up territory, with multiple component suppliers hitting their 10% daily cap.

Unitree's own warning

After the three-session rally, Unitree issued a formal abnormal-trading announcement dated October 21, warning investors of significant valuation risks.

The company said its operations remained normal, identified no undisclosed material developments explaining the share-price movement, and confirmed that directors, senior executives and controlling shareholders had not traded during the period.

The company also said that the humanoid robotics industry remains in "early commercialization stage" with unresolved challenges in "technological maturity, cultivation of downstream market demand, and supply chain support capabilities." If large-scale commercialization falls short of expectations, the filing warned, the company faces "investment risks related to valuation regression." In addition, the company confirmed that directors, senior management, and the controlling shareholder all abstained from trading.

Wang Xingxing told Fortune in August, right after the IPO surge, that the ChatGPT moment for robots arrives "2 to 3 years at the fastest, and 5 or even 10 years at the slowest." 

His definition: a robot "can be placed in an unfamiliar home and successfully perform about 80% of requested tasks using only voice or text instructions." Current robots, he said, "remain less efficient than human workers and require retraining for each new task."

That's a pretty pointed thing to say in August 2026, the week your stock soars 460% on debut, and it shows an admirable amount of caution. It's even more pointed when you repeat it formally to a stock exchange 2 months later.

Investors take note: this is a great growth sector, but it's not all going to happen overnight.

The financials behind the multiple

Meanwhile, Unitree's numbers are genuinely strong. 

In 2025 Unitree's 2025 revenue data showed approximately 1.7 billion yuan (~$253 million), up 332% year-over-year, with net profit of 278 million yuan. Gross margins around 60%, and Unitree shipped more than 5,500 humanoid robots, leading the world in volume.

Revenue is still growing in 2026: up 48% in H1. But profitability is deteriorating. Adjusted net profit fell 19% year-over-year in H1 even as revenue climbed as R&D expenses surged 152% and H1 selling expenses alone exceeded the full-year 2025 total.

In addition, Unitree's regulatory disclosures show that 73.6% of its humanoid revenue in the first nine months of 2025 came from research and education, with just 9% classified as industrial applications. Essentially, we're so early in the humanoid robot revolution that only a fraction of robots are doing actual work.

It's coming, IMHO. But it's going to take some time.

At a market cap exceeding 200 billion yuan and a trailing P/E of 388x, Unitree needs roughly 5 billion yuan in annual earnings to justify its current valuation at even a 40x multiple. That's a 10X bump: doable, but probably not overnight. And ... this is a space with a LOT of coming competition.

The bet being priced in

However, the comparison investors are drawing is Tesla.

Tesla also has vastly elevated multiples thanks to Optimus being valued as a potential multi-trillion-dollar business. Bank of America pegs the Optimus segment at ~$30 billion; Morgan Stanley has modeled it as high as $180 billion over time.

Unitree at $28 billion is pricing in similar optionality: a company that today sells research robots but tomorrow potentially dominates industrial and home deployment at massive scale. The question is whether Unitree has the manufacturing depth, software ecosystem, and scale economics to earn that comparison, or whether the market is projecting Tesla's trajectory onto a company that hasn't demonstrated it yet.

(The question is equally valid for Tesla, of course.)

Wang Peng at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences told the Global Times in October: "The industry was experiencing a period of inflated valuations, with capital markets pricing in future growth potential prematurely."

Investors won't have to wait long for another reality check. 

Unitree is expected to report third-quarter earnings on October 29, offering fresh evidence of whether revenue growth, margins and commercial deployment are beginning to justify the stock's extraordinary valuation. For now, the market is pricing in a humanoid revolution that Unitree's own disclosures suggest is still largely ahead of us.

Nice if you own the stock. Not so nice if you don't.

Sources

• Global Times — Unitree October market surge
• BigGo Finance — Unitree 388x P/E analysis
• Fortune — Wang Xingxing ChatGPT moment interview
• CNBC — Unitree CEO ChatGPT warning
• ValueAdd VC — Unitree IPO financials
• KuCoin — Unitree investment risk warning
• Humanoids Daily — China robot policy October
• BigGo Finance — Tesla Optimus V3 production