The long-awaited initial public offering of Unitree Robotics, which values the Hangzhou-based firm at 60.99 billion yuan (US$9 billion), is set to serve as a valuation benchmark for China’s booming embodied-AI sector, buoyed by retail investor excitement and high-profile AI backers like DeepSeek. Widely billed as “mainland China’s first humanoid stock”, Unitree has priced its IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market at 150.8 yuan per share, according to a filing released Thursday evening. The firm will sell 40.45 million new shares to raise 6.1 billion yuan – above its initial 4.2 billion yuan target. Backers including AI unicorn DeepSeek and tech giant Tencent Holdings joined the strategic placement, alongside state-backed giants China National Petroleum Corp, China Southern Power Grid, China Telecom, Citic Securities and the National Council for Social Security Fund. DeepSeek, which invested 141 million yuan bound by a three-year lock-up period, agreed to co-develop AI models and embodied-intelligence technology with Unitree. The two firms would also give each other priority access in areas such as robot procurement and AI model services, Unitree said. A valuation ‘ceiling’ Unitree’s IPO would serve as a valuation anchor – and effectively the ceiling – for other companies in the embodied-intelligence space, said Zheng Hualiang, founder of Leap VC, a Hangzhou-based venture capital firm investing in AI hardware and foundational models. Zheng’s team first backed Unitree in 2022 when its pre-money valuation was about 1 billion yuan. At the time, “its ability to traverse different terrain and motion control was clearly superior to companies building wheeled robots”, he said. The listing comes as a wave of Chinese robotics start-ups – including Deep Robotics, Leju Robotics, AgiBot, X Square Robot and LimX Dynamics – race to enter public markets. Venture capital firms have already pushed valuations for top-tier start-ups beyond 20 billion yuan, sparking growing debate over a potential bubble in physical AI. At 150.8 yuan per share, Unitree’s IPO implies a price-to-earnings ratio of 219.23 times and a price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of 35.89 times. For comparison, Hong Kong-listed peers UBTech Robotics and Dobot trade at P/S multiples of 19.37 times and 20.12 times, respectively, while remaining unprofitable. Unlike most of its Chinese rivals, Unitree is profitable. The company recorded 1.7 billion yuan in revenue and 591 million yuan in adjusted net profit last year, according to its prospectus. Retail enthusiasm Despite high valuations, investor interest remains robust. “If Unitree doesn’t get this listing right, it could make [fundraising] harder for the companies behind it,” said an employee at a rival Chinese robotics start-up who asked to be identified only by his surname Zhang. He said he planned to subscribe to the Unitree IPO on Monday despite having low expectations for getting an allotment. Kathy Shi, a Shanghai-based retail investor, said she applied for shares as a bet on the listing premium rather than on near-term industry fundamentals. Shi said she did not expect large-scale commercial adoption of embodied intelligence any time soon, citing policy backing and Star Market excitement as her main drivers. Unitree’s debut comes amid a volatile backdrop for mainland tech stocks. Fears of overcrowded trades triggered sharp sell-offs in AI computing, semiconductors and optical modules last month. Shanghai’s tech-focused Star 50 Index swung wildly in July, closing the month down nearly 26 per cent. Zheng cautioned that any broader rally across the robotics supply chain could prove short-lived unless shipment volumes scale rapidly. “The secondary market may trade on the theme in the short term,” Zheng said. “Over the longer run, it still comes down to whether that [enthusiasm] translates into actual business.” For now, Unitree retained a distinct edge over its competitors through low-cost mass production capabilities and strong consumer brand recognition, he added.