Three sets of figures were published between 11 and 17 August, and none of them says on its own what the three say together. The first describes a share offering : 150.80 yuan a share, 6.099 billion raised, a company valued at 60.993 billion. The second describes a product : the same manufacturer's entry ticket has fallen from around 650 000 yuan in 2023 to 26 900 yuan this year. The third describes usage : roughly 19 100 shipments worldwide over the half-year, and an open disagreement over the share of machines that are genuinely at work. Together, they say that the scarcity paid for this week is not that of the robot.

A manufactured scarcity, on the paper side

Unitree will be listed on 19 August on the STAR Market of the Shanghai Stock Exchange under the code 688836 (chnfund.com). The issue covers 40 446 400 new shares at 150.80 yuan, i.e. 6.099 billion yuan raised and a valuation of around 60.993 billion at listing (chinanews.com.cn). Set against 2025 revenue — 1.708 billion yuan, after 392 million in 2024 and 159 million in 2023 — the valuation works out, once calculated, at close to 36 times revenue  set against 2025 net profit, 288 million yuan (single secondary source, chinanews.com.cn), at more than 210 times.

These multiples cannot be read without the machinery that produces them. Out of roughly 404 million shares after issuance, only 30 087 700 are said to be freely tradable at the start of listing, i.e. 7.44 % of capital — and the company itself flags a risk of insufficient liquidity. This point rests on a single secondary source alone, chnfund.com. Online subscription exceeded the number of shares on offer by more than 8 288 times — this is the final multiple for the online offering alone, after closing — which triggered the clawback mechanism  22 650 148 shares then went to institutions and 9 707 000 to the public, for a final allotment rate of 0.01809759 %, i.e., once calculated, one share allotted for roughly every 5 500 requested (sina.cn). The lottery produced 19 414 winning numbers, at 500 shares each, i.e. 75 400 yuan to be paid per lot. The filing itself is reported to have been processed in around a hundred days, from acceptance on 20 March 2026 to the registration taking effect on 2 July (single secondary source, chinanews.com.cn).

A minuscule free float, an express procedure, an order book thousands of times larger than the available paper : the price that comes out of that is first and foremost a measure of supply constraint. DeepSeek is among the investors in the deal's strategic placement (roboticsandautomationnews.com).

The product, for its part, is collapsing in price

The same week delivers the other end of the chain. Unitree's entry-level price has gone from around 650 000 yuan for the H1 in August 2023 to 26 900 yuan for the two-armed R1 in 2026, a fall of 95 % in three years, with the base version of the G1 still listed at 85 000 yuan. The G1's BOM (bill of materials) is estimated at around 41 600 yuan, for a gross margin of 40.7 % — this ratio is reported as such by the source, it cannot be derived from the listed price of the base G1 and therefore does not cover the same scope. The deflation is not a fire sale, it is industrial and profitable. Both of these figures — the 95 % fall as well as the BOM — come from a single secondary source, wap.stockstar.com.

Volumes are following the same slope, all reported by single secondary pickups. More than 40 000 humanoids are said to have been produced in China in the first half of 2026 alone, against 14 400 units across the whole of 2025  the Hangzhou G1 line is reported to be running at 200 units a month and targeting 500 in the fourth quarter (wap.stockstar.com). Unitree is said to have produced a cumulative total of around 18 000 bipeds as of July 2026, all models combined excluding wheeled platforms and hybrid architectures, of which more than 11 000 G1s (humanoidsdaily.com). The average selling price (ASP) of series-produced industrial humanoids reportedly starts above 14 800 dollars, with the top of the range exceeding 59 000 dollars (trashbox.ru).

Shipping is not putting to work

The third set is the most uncomfortable. Smart Analytics Global counts roughly 19 100 humanoid shipments worldwide in the first half of 2026 (globaltimes.cn), up 272 % year on year, of which more than 97 % for Chinese manufacturers — the six largest vendors worldwide by volume are all Chinese, for a combined 87.87 % (finance.biggo.com).

Two reading precautions are called for, and nobody will take them on our behalf.

  • Production is not shipment. The 40 000 units produced in China and the 19 100 shipments worldwide measure neither the same thing nor the same scope. We set them side by side  we never add them together.
  • Shipment is not deployment to work. Two concurring secondary pickups, finance.biggo.com and wap.stockstar.com, put more than 70 % of the half-year's shipments in industrial and commercial use, against roughly 50 % a year earlier — the same figures two days apart, and nothing establishes that they trace back to two distinct surveys. A survey by the Chinese automotive outlet Gasgoo, likewise relayed by a single secondary source (trashbox.ru), estimates conversely that fewer than 15 % of the humanoids shipped are assigned to genuine production tasks. This is not contradictory : the first set counts the billed destination, the second the work performed. A significant proportion of the remainder goes to partners and shareholders for internal trials, to research centres for the collection of training data, and to trade shows and shopping centres.

The week's most spectacular productivity figure did not, as it happens, come from a humanoid. On 12 August, X Square Robot broadcast an hour-long unedited livestream on X and YouTube, with the counter stopping at 1 816 parcels, for an announced success rate above 98 % (pandaily.com). The system is a fixed two-armed station, fitted with grippers designed for the task, with no five-fingered hands and no dexterous manipulation (humanoidsdaily.com)  the throughput is attributed to the WALL-B robotic foundation model, which replaces hand-written rules with a learned policy deciding how each parcel is handled. The target announced before the clock started, 1 248 parcels an hour, is said to correspond to Figure's hourly average on its 200-hour autonomous marathon (single secondary source, pandaily.com). At Figure, the thousandth Figure 03 has come off the BotQ factory line, a milestone reported on 16 August with no production date specified (humanoidsdaily.com)  the deployment at the BMW plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, consists of picking unsorted components out of large bins and placing them in sequencing trolleys (humanoid.press). So where throughput is exploding, it is not the humanoid form that is producing it : it is a fixed two-armed station, without dexterous manipulation.

What the share price does not price in

Unitree is being listed as a champion in the very week when AgiBot takes the world's top spot from it in shipped volume, with a 44 % market share in the first half  in 2025, first place went to Unitree, with 5 500 units over the year. And if the humanoids are isolated within 2025 revenue — 867.8 million yuan out of 1.708 billion, according to the only source that publishes this breakdown, roboticsandautomationnews.com — the valuation works out, once calculated, at around 70 times the revenue of the very activity that carries the stock-market story.

What remains is what no share price measures. Brett Adcock shifted the industry's bottleneck this week : in his view, mass production of the hardware is no longer the main obstacle, the decisive constraint now being the decision-making autonomy delivered by on-board AI. He announces a third commercial customer, first partners with a positive return on investment, and a sustained rate of 2.9 seconds per parcel over 200 consecutive hours where the customer required 3 seconds — company announcements relayed by a single secondary source (humanoidsdaily.com). This is the one variable of the week with no share price attached to it. Behind it, the queue is already forming : AI² Robotics is reported to be preparing a listing in Hong Kong, with banks mandated and a flotation targeted as early as 2027, for a valuation above 20 billion yuan after its 2025 and 2026 funding rounds — with no public confirmation from the company at this stage, and on the strength of a single secondary source (roboactu.fr).

The coming week will settle part of all this. 19 August gives the first price, and the gap between the 150.80 yuan issue price and what the market is willing to pay with a free float announced at 7.44 % will tell us which of the two prices has been quoted : that of a company, or that of a paper shortage. Three further markers will follow, more slowly : the G1 line is due to go from 200 to 500 units a month by the fourth quarter  the annual volume for 2026 is projected at up to 60 000 units, or even close to 100 000, after roughly 19 100 in the half-year — a projection likewise drawn from a single secondary source (trashbox.ru)  and the next surveys will tell us whether the share of machines effectively at work catches up with the share billed to industry. The price of the stock will be known in a single trading session. The price of decision-making autonomy will not.