Humanoid Robots: AgiBot valued privately at 50 billion yuan, Unitree down over 60 percent on market

The Chinese humanoid manufacturer AgiBot is said to be worth around 50 billion yuan in its new valuation. According to a report by business magazine Caijing on October 13, the Shanghai-based company is close to completing a funding round of 1 to 1.5 billion yuan, which would more than triple its previous 15 billion yuan valuation.

At the same time, the opposite is happening in the same market, as Unitree, the first pure humanoid manufacturer listed on a Chinese mainland stock exchange, has lost over 60 percent of its peak value since its August IPO. Private capital continues to pay top prices, while the stock market is already valuing the same industry more soberly, and the new funding round is pushing AgiBot's Hong Kong IPO to 2027.

The reason is a Hong Kong stock exchange rule requiring 120 days between the completion of pre-IPO financing and listing without an exemption waiver. If AgiBot closes the round at the end of October, trading could start earliest at the end of February, according to portal 36Kr. In July, when preparations began, there was talk of a listing from August and a target valuation of 40 to 50 billion Hong Kong dollars. AgiBot itself declined to comment on either the round or the timeline.

The valuation is not entirely without substance, as AgiBot delivered over 5,100 humanoids in 2025 according to market researcher Omdia, accounting for approximately 39 percent of the global market. Revenue in the same year was 1.05 billion yuan, and in September, according to company information, the 20,000th robot rolled off the line. However, measured against the previous year's revenue, investors are demanding nearly fifty times that amount, and this in an industry where, according to Omdia, only around ten percent of delivered units are working productively, while the rest are tied up in research, data collection, and demonstration purposes.

Unitree shows how quickly sentiment can shift. The stock closed on its first trading day, August 19, around 460 percent above its issue price; since then, according to 36Kr, the market value has fallen from a peak of 444.9 billion yuan to approximately 170 billion. The fact that adjusted profits had declined 53 percent in the first quarter was not reflected in the prices of those first days.

Meanwhile, the market is growing quite robustly. According to IDC, nearly 25,000 humanoids were delivered worldwide in the first half of 2026, more than five times as many as a year earlier, with 77.9 percent coming from China. For the full year, TrendForce expects around 50,000 units and Goldman Sachs even 75,000, which also means that today's valuations are anticipating unit volumes that still need to be built and sold.

Peking authorities have recognized the danger of overheating. The stock exchange regulator CSRC laid down criteria for IPOs of humanoid companies at the end of September after having previously reviewed several applications more strictly. According to 36Kr, over 20 embodied AI companies are planning to go public, including Deep Robotics, which sold just six humanoids in the first half of the year. This single figure explains the watchdog's caution better than any price chart.

In the West, money is flowing just as generously. On October 20, startup Eka Robotics reached a valuation of 1.45 billion with a Series A of 150 million dollars, despite having only pilot projects to show so far. On November 2, Churchill Capital XI shareholders will also vote on the SPAC IPO of Agility Robotics, which will soon show the US market as well what investors are really willing to pay for humanoids.

For Switzerland, the gap between private and public capital is more than a side note. On October 22, Zurich startup Enact Intelligence, founded by Manuel Galliker, who studied at ETH and previously worked at 1X, announced a pre-seed round of 30 million dollars, in which AI researcher Yann LeCun participated alongside redalpine. However, the Raiffeisen analysis from September shows that in rounds over 100 million dollars, only 12 percent of capital comes from Switzerland.

Whether the 50 billion yuan for AgiBot is justified will ultimately be decided not by the next funding round, but by the Hong Kong stock exchange, and it now has at least until the end of February to make its judgment.