[UPDATE] Unitree Soars 629% in Its Shanghai Debut

Shares in Unitree Robotics rocketed as much as 629 percent on their first day of trading in Shanghai on Wednesday, valuing the Chinese humanoid-robot maker at around 66 billion dollars and handing retail investors one of the wildest debuts of the year.

The stock, listed under the company's formal name Yushu Technology, opened at 1,100 yuan against an IPO price of 150.8 yuan before giving back some of the gain. When we covered the pricing last week, Unitree had raised 6.1 billion yuan, roughly 905 million dollars, overshooting its 4.2 billion yuan target. Wednesday's pop was the largest first-day jump for any new listing in China this year, and it made Unitree the first humanoid-robot company to trade on a mainland exchange.

The frenzy was visible long before the opening bell. The retail portion of the offering was oversubscribed more than 8,000 times, a level of demand that says as much about the mood around Chinese robotics as it does about Unitree. Founder Wang Xingxing, who is 36, holds about 121.4 million shares, a stake worth well over 100 billion yuan at the opening price. Meituan, the food-delivery group and Unitree's largest outside backer, watched its holding swell to roughly 31 billion yuan by midday, more than 70 times what it originally invested.

A valuation running ahead of the robots

Numbers like these invite an obvious question. Does the business justify them? Unitree sells four-legged robots and humanoid machines that have become fixtures of viral demo videos, and it has real revenue alongside a manufacturing lead in lower-cost robot hardware. A 66 billion dollar valuation on day one is still a bet on where the company might be years from now, not on what it earns today. The gap between the IPO price and the opening trade also shows how hard these floats are to price when retail appetite runs this hot.

The listing lands as Chinese firms race to own the humanoid-hardware market. Unitree recently lost its spot as the top humanoid-robot vendor by shipments to rival AgiBot, and the capital now pouring into the sector will decide whether that lead changes hands again. For Wednesday at least, the market's verdict was not subtle.