Unitree Back at 300 Billion: The Android of the Humanoid Robot Era

In the morning session on November 9, Unitree Technology rose 15%, bringing its market value back to 300 billion. This figure already went through a round in August: on the 19th, its first day of trading, it opened at 1,100 yuan, up 629%, and its market value surged to 444.9 billion; on the 20th, the second trading day, it opened lower at 790 yuan, hit an intraday low of 688.68 yuan, closed the morning at 709.4 yuan, down more than 16%, and its market value shrank from 341.8 billion at the first day's close to 293 billion, a loss of nearly 50 billion in one day. Nine days earlier, during the IPO subscription, the pricing was still 60.9 billion.

Beyond the share price, Apple's team validated the HALO autonomous control system for humanoid robots using the Unitree G1, running 360 tasks across 6 real rooms that had never been mapped, with a 91% success rate; NVIDIA's GR00T reference platform also uses the H2 Plus; and in university labs around the world, the G1 is becoming increasingly common. What this 300 billion is buying is no longer just that well-selling robot dog.

Unitree G1 humanoid robot (Source / Unitree official website)

Apple and NVIDIA Run Their Systems on Unitree's Body

The line in the HALO paper, "we deployed the system on the G1 for validation," presupposes that researchers can modify the G1. The hardware design, low-level interfaces, and SDK are all open, so once you get the machine you can install your own algorithms and reproduce your own results. Swap in a closed black box, and this paper could not have been written.

Unitree also does not reach upstream to grab this business. It touches neither algorithms nor industry solutions; it just builds the body well and leaves the brain to others. Apple writes the control, NVIDIA builds the platform, universities do the research—what each party would otherwise have had to assemble on its own now all lands on the same physical body.

The 99,000-Yuan G1 and the 9,900-Yuan Robotic Arm

To get others to use it as a base, you first have to make it affordable. The G1 sells for 99,000 yuan, and the quadruped robot dog was long ago pushed down to the ten-thousand-yuan level; on August 20, Unitree also launched a bionic 7-axis robotic arm, starting at 9,900 yuan, weighing 5.5 kilograms, capable of sorting and assembling materials with two arms working together, initially sold to research and education scenarios. From the robot dog to the G1 to the robotic arm, each product release lowers the threshold for this category by one notch.

Unitree dexterous hand product image (Source / Unitree official website)

The price can be pushed down thanks to in-house development and cost control. As more teams can afford it, more of them use it for experiments and papers.

Wang Xingxing's Own Standard Has Not Yet Been Met

On August 20 at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, Wang Xingxing made his first public appearance after the IPO, and in a speech of just over ten minutes he did not mention the share price. He talked about why robots have not yet entered factories and homes on a large scale, and put it bluntly: overall efficiency and capability are still insufficient. For the same job, a robot currently cannot beat a human; when it encounters an unseen task it must be retrained, which is even less efficient.

Two to three years at the fastest, five to ten years at the slowest—that is the timetable he set for a key breakthrough. He was equally clear about the acceptance criteria: a robot entering an unfamiliar home and completing about 80% of daily tasks via voice commands; Bloomberg summarized this as entering the mass market within ten years.

Unitree intelligent inspection solution scenario (Source / Unitree official website)

First-Half Revenue of 1.152 Billion Yuan, Non-Recurring Net Profit Down 19.34%

In the first-half data disclosed at the August listing, revenue was 1.152 billion yuan, up 48.54%, and non-recurring net profit was 244 million yuan, down 19.34%. The products sell, but profit has not risen with them. According to Counterpoint, global humanoid robot shipments in the first half of 2026 were 22,000 units, up nearly 300% year on year, with full-year shipments expected to exceed 50,000. With the industry shipping only this much in a year, the market's valuation of Unitree is not calculated on selling tens of thousands of units a year.

Unitree G1 walking posture (Source / Unitree official website)

Hardware is different from software. Once Android got working, its replication cost was almost zero, and once the ecosystem grew it became very hard to overturn; the body, by contrast, must keep wrestling with supply chains, costs, and manufacturing, and if someone else makes a cheaper substitute, being first is just being first. Tesla's Optimus takes the opposite path, holding the body, algorithms, and data all in its own hands; if this track ever consolidates to two or three players, vertical integration would instead be an advantage.

If it really reaches that point, Unitree will just be a supplier that was chosen early on. For now the players are still scattered, with Apple, NVIDIA, and universities all building their own things on the G1, and for the moment no one can replace this position. Whether the 15% on November 9 is buying one thing or the other is still impossible to tell. What can be checked later is quarterly shipments and profit, plus the number of times the G1 appears in third-party papers and products. Wang Xingxing's standard of 80% of daily tasks has no measured results yet.