Two hundred million twice in half a year: China's humanoid manufacturers push toward IPO

Approximately 200 million dollars in a single financing round, completed on July 14, at a valuation of 2.2 billion dollars. For LimX Dynamics, the Shenzhen-based robotics company founded in 2022, this is already the second round of this size within six months—in February, the company had raised the same amount in Series B funding. Co-founder Wei Zhang makes no secret of the declared objective behind it: the next step is going public.

With this, LimX joins a movement that is gaining real momentum in China right now. Industry leader Unitree received definitive approval from securities regulators on July 3 for a listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, with a target of over 600 million dollars in equivalent value. What is remarkable is less the sum than the pace: between application and approval lay 73 days, one of the fastest review processes the technology stock exchange has ever seen. The authorities are clearly giving robotics firms preferential treatment at the moment.

Unitree brings with it something that is still rare in this industry: black numbers. In 2025, the Hangzhou-based company generated approximately 250 million dollars in revenue and earned around 41 million in the process. The company delivered over 5,500 humanoid robots last year, with the business in these bipedal machines now accounting for roughly half of revenues, compared to a good quarter the year before. If you're wondering how seriously China takes the commercialization of humanoids, these figures provide a pretty clear answer.

The contrast with the West is striking. There, Agility Robotics has just become the first pure humanoid manufacturer to venture onto the market through a merger with a shell company, and the company is far from profitable. China, meanwhile, is sending an entire cohort to the market. Television broadcaster CNBC quoted an industry representative this week saying that a listing is simply mandatory: whoever wants to keep pace in the race for scale and lower unit costs needs access to deep capital pools, and you only find those on the public market.

Interesting is who invested in LimX. In addition to Chinese entities such as IDG Capital and existing investors JD.com and Alibaba, Stone Venture from the Emirates and Redstone, a venture capital firm from Germany, also participated. European money is therefore already flowing into China's humanoid boom, while European manufacturers like Zurich-based Neura Robotics, valued at 1.4 billion, are still raising their capital privately.

For Swiss observers, the IPO wave means two things. First, the industry will soon be measured by hard quarterly figures rather than demo videos—that should bring some valuations back down to earth. Second, the products are getting closer: Unitree plans to invest the proceeds from the stock listing in new models and its own manufacturing, and the company's devices are already in use here today, from four-legged inspection robots to humanoids in research laboratories. What begins as share price fantasy in Shanghai stands experience shows, in European factories as concrete reality just a few years later.