China's humanoid robotics sector witnessed a spectacle of extreme contradictions as Unitree Robotics, dubbed the "first humanoid robot stock on A-shares," made its debut on the STAR Market. Priced at 150.8 yuan per share with a market capitalization of 61 billion yuan, the IPO carried a price-to-earnings ratio of 219 times, dwarfing the industry average of just 38 times and placing its valuation at over five times the sector norm. On its first trading day, the stock surged more than 629% at the open, briefly pushing the company's market value to a staggering 440 billion yuan.
Yet a deeply ironic scene unfolded in parallel: on the very same day of Unitree's stock price celebration, the broader robotics supply chain sector plummeted 8.38%, leaving a host of supporting companies nursing heavy losses. The Apple ecosystem has long followed a classic logic: when Apple's stock rises, the entire upstream and downstream supplier chain benefits in tandem, truly embodying the adage "when one person achieves success, everyone around shares the glory." A thriving industry leader signals order spillover, allowing the entire sector to reap the rewards of industrial prosperity. However, Unitree's listing painted a starkly different picture, one the market has wryly dubbed "when one person achieves success, even the chickens and dogs are left with nothing." A massive pool of market capital was siphoned off by the new listing, with funds drained from other supply chain players and triggering a brutal redistribution of capital within the sector itself.
It must be acknowledged objectively that Unitree is no hollow shell company built purely on narratives. The firm posted full-year revenue of 1.7 billion yuan in 2025 and 1.15 billion yuan in the first half of 2026, genuinely manufacturing robotics products with real technological foundations and order backlogs. But a good company does not automatically equate to a good stock, and industry prospects cannot be directly equated with current share prices. Let us run a cold calculation on valuation: at the issuance stage, the P/E ratio stood at 219 times, and at its intraday peak, it approached a jaw-dropping 800 times. An 800-times earnings multiple means that even if the company's profits were to double every single year, it would still require nine consecutive years of uninterrupted growth to compress that valuation down to a reasonable 20-times range. Humanoid robotics is unquestionably a golden track, but even the most promising industry requires time for companies to mature gradually. When capital markets choose to cash in two decades' worth of growth expectations in a single moment, all that remains for secondary market investors is a long and painful digestion period.
The IPO's pricing mechanism also drew heavy criticism from the market. Institutional investors had generally projected a pricing range of 90 to 110 yuan per share, yet the final issuance price of 150.8 yuan represented a significant markup above the upper bound of expectations. The company raised 6.1 billion yuan, substantially oversubscribed compared to its original plans. The online lottery winning rate was a mere 0.018%, setting a historic low for the STAR Market. On the surface, this reflects intense investor enthusiasm, but beneath it lies a concern the market cannot easily dismiss: such a lofty issuance price objectively opens up valuation headroom for a massive wave of lock-up expirations in the future. Early-stage investors from the primary market hold substantial stakes and are now waiting for their unlocking windows. Under the registration system, the STAR Market was designed to channel capital into hardcore technology and serve as a "refueling station" for genuine tech enterprises. Yet in the eyes of some market participants, it has morphed into a short-term cash machine. History has already provided a cautionary tale: UBTech Robotics, the first humanoid robot stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, once made its debut under a halo of glory, but its share price has since retreated significantly from its issuance price, leaving early secondary market investors nursing devastating losses.
On the day of Unitree's explosive debut, the STAR 50 Index simultaneously tumbled nearly 7%. When market liquidity is finite, and when the imagination space of decades into the future is mortgaged to a single enterprise, the resources available to other technology companies inevitably get squeezed. A clear boundary must be drawn here: Unitree is itself a technology enterprise genuinely committed to physical research and development, and the company itself bears no guilt. But a good company and a good stock are two entirely separate matters. The primary market and IPO subscription funds are feasting, yet the ones footing the bill are not just retail investors. Public funds, wealth management products, and the financial vehicles that underlie countless ordinary people's savings are all deeply embedded in the secondary market. Every ordinary individual is indirectly caught in this high-stakes game. Much of the criticism leveled at the A-share market is not a rejection of tech companies going public. On the contrary, we desperately want domestic robotics and hardcore technology enterprises to thrive. What people detest is this extreme valuation game that mortgages the industry's future. In the short term, it may look like an IPO celebration, but the long-term risks are borne collectively by the entire market.
Of course, the long-term upward trajectory of the humanoid robotics industry remains unchanged. But for ordinary investors, when a story seems so beautiful it borders on the unreal, vigilance is paramount. Spectating at the carnival is fine, but protecting your own hard-earned money must remain the bottom line. The tragic irony, however, may be this: the capital flowing into the secondary market is not merely your own money—it also includes the funds you put into mutual funds, the premiums you pay for insurance, and the deposits you keep in banks. No matter how you try to avoid it, escaping the fate of being the "leek" may ultimately prove impossible.