Reported by | NUPIAO Staff Writer
On August 10, Unitree Robotics officially launched its online and offline subscription process. The offering price is set at 150.80 yuan per share, placing the company’s total post-issue market value at roughly 60.99 billion yuan. The IPO is expected to raise close to 6.1 billion yuan, with a price-to-earnings ratio of 219.23 times—far exceeding the industry’s static average P/E of 38.56 times.
In this wealth bonanza, Meituan and Sequoia China—backed by their heavy multi-round investments—are expected to emerge as the biggest external winners after Unitree’s listing. Meanwhile, DJI, which chose to pull out in the early stages, may have missed out on nearly 4 billion yuan in paper gains.
According to Unitree’s prospectus, Meituan holds a combined 9.65% pre-offering stake through three entities—Hanhai Information Technology, Galaxy Z, and Chengdu Longzhu—making it the largest external institutional shareholder. Sequoia China follows closely, holding 7.11% through platforms such as Ningbo Sequoia and Xiamen Yaheng, ranking as the second-largest institutional investor.
Both companies participated in multiple funding rounds for Unitree. Sequoia was the earliest to jump in, investing 15 million yuan in December 2019 during a capital increase, when Unitree’s post-investment valuation was just 150 million yuan. They later added another 12.5 million yuan to boost their stake. Meituan entered the picture a bit later but consistently poured in substantial capital through subsequent financing rounds.
Based on the current offering price, even after accounting for IPO share dilution, the equity held by Meituan and Sequoia still translates into remarkably high book values.
Compared to these beneficiaries, DJI’s story feels like a case of what might have been. Before founding Unitree, Wang Xingxing—the company’s creator—briefly worked at DJI for just over two months before leaving to start his own venture. Our research into the audit report issued by Rongcheng Certified Public Accountants for Unitree reveals that in 2018, DJI’s fund, DJI NewChina PE Fund‑1 L.P, planned to invest 10.1286 million yuan in Unitree’s second capital increase. Had the deal gone through, DJI would have held approximately 17% equity, corresponding to a post-investment valuation of around 60 million yuan at the time.
DJI had actually completed the business registration and briefly became Unitree’s largest external shareholder. But the investment never fully materialized—in 2019, DJI opted to reduce its capital and exited the shareholder roster entirely. Had DJI held onto that investment through the IPO, its stake would be worth approximately 3.7 billion yuan at the offering price.
DJI has never publicly explained why it pulled out of Unitree. But notably, in that same year of 2019, the company issued an anti-corruption announcement, disclosing that it had dealt with 45 employees involved in suspected corruption and misconduct, with conservative estimates putting the losses from corruption at over 1 billion yuan.
The announcement revealed that in 2018, DJI underwent internal management reforms—streamlining internal processes, resetting approval checkpoints, and reshuffling leadership positions. During this process, DJI unexpectedly uncovered widespread corruption among R&D, procurement, and quality control personnel in the supplier onboarding chain. Other departments, including sales, administration, and after-sales, also showed instances of employees abusing their authority for personal gain.
Addressing the impact of workplace corruption on the entire supply chain, DJI stated in the announcement: “From raw material procurement and semi-finished processing to the final components used by the company, even if corruption at each stage only pushes procurement costs up by 5% to 10%, by the time it reaches the company through three tiers of the supply chain, costs invisibly rise by 16% to 33%.”
Reports suggest that this anti-corruption crackdown brought DJI’s investment division to a grinding halt, with all external investment projects urgently suspended for review.
But DJI’s departure didn’t stop other new investors from stepping in. The prospectus reveals that Matrix Partners China holds a combined 5.45% stake in Unitree, Shunwei Capital holds 4.42%, and CITIC Securities’ affiliates—Jinshi Growth and Zhongzheng Investment—together hold 4.49%, all of whom stand to gain substantial paper profits. Internet and telecom giants like Tencent, Alibaba, Ant Group, and China Mobile also hold small stakes. State-owned industrial funds such as the Beijing Robotics Industry Fund and China Internet Investment Fund, along with VC firms like Vertex Ventures and Initial Capital, also appear on the shareholder roster.
Unitree’s strategic placement list was also disclosed, totaling 8,089,286 shares—accounting for 20% of the total offering—distributed among nine strategic investors.
Liang Wenfeng’s Hangzhou DeepSeek secured 933,400 shares with a subscription amount of 141 million yuan, subject to a 36-month lock-up period. Tencent’s Shanghai Qishan Investment received a comparable allocation of 903,300 shares, with the lock-up period determined by whichever comes later between Tencent’s investment date and the listing date. Energy and power grid state-owned enterprises have also made deep inroads into the humanoid robot sector—CNPC Kunlun Capital, China Southern Power Grid Industrial Finance Holdings, and Tianyi Capital each received 903,300 shares.
As the sole sponsor for Unitree’s IPO, CITIC Securities stands to earn approximately 145 million yuan in underwriting and sponsorship fees, translating to an average revenue of about 5.8 million yuan per team member. Additionally, CITIC Securities will follow on with a 122 million yuan strategic placement investment, acquiring 808,900 shares.
CITIC Securities is also an early shareholder in Unitree, having made two investments totaling approximately 33.45 million yuan in 2024. These investments are expected to surge to nearly 500 million yuan after Unitree’s listing—a return on investment of close to 1,300%.
But risks are part of the picture too. Unitree announced on August 6 that the offering price of 150.80 yuan per share corresponds to a diluted static price-to-sales ratio of 35.89 times for 2025, higher than the average level of comparable companies in the industry. The offering price also implies a diluted P/E ratio of 219.23 times for 2025 (calculated using the lower of figures before or after non-recurring items), exceeding the industry’s average static P/E ratio over the past month as published by the China Securities Index Company. This creates a risk that the company’s share price could decline after listing, potentially causing losses for investors.
With subscription opening on August 10 and the payment deadline for successful applicants set for August 12, the market is now waiting for the secondary market to deliver its final verdict. Regardless of how the stock performs post-listing, Unitree is about to deliver a massive payday for its early investors.
