Unitree Robotics IPO is 5,500 times oversubscribed by retail investors

In short: Chinese robot maker Unitree Robotics drew so many small-investor orders for its IPO that the retail portion was more than 5,500 times oversubscribed.

What happened

Unitree Robotics, a Chinese company known for humanoid robots, is preparing to list its shares in Shanghai later this month. An IPO, short for initial public offering, is when a private company sells shares to the public for the first time.

According to a stock exchange filing cited by the Financial Times, demand from retail investors, meaning everyday individual investors, vastly exceeded the number of shares set aside for them. The retail part was more than 5,500 times oversubscribed, which is like selling 100 concert tickets and getting 550,000 requests.

Ahead of the listing, Unitree allotted about 40.4 million shares, around 10 percent of its outstanding shares, priced at Rmb150.8 (about $22.35). The sale raised Rmb6.1bn (about $904m) and valued the company at about $9bn.

Retail investors received about 16 percent of the shares, while institutional investors, such as hedge funds, received the rest. The report said some institutional buyers included hedge funds linked to DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng.

The Financial Times also noted broader excitement in China for AI and AI-related stocks. It pointed to the Star 50 index rising 27.4 percent this year, compared with a 0.8 percent gain for the CSI 300.

Why it matters

The demand shows how strongly many people in China want exposure to companies tied to AI and robotics, even as overseas sales could face uncertainty. The report noted the US Federal Communications Commission recently banned imports of humanoid robots, and Unitree said new models could face the risk of being cut off from the US market.

Source: Financial Times