Wang Xingxing (Zhejiang, China, 36 years old) fell in love with technology as a child. Already in school he imagined himself building robots capable of leaving their mark on history. Luckily for him, sometimes dreams come true... and they even go public. Unitree, the company he founded in 2016 and which has become famous for its humanoid machines capable of dancing and doing kung fu, had a spectacular premiere on the Shanghai trading floor.
Its shares went on the stock market on August 19 with a price below 20 euros. At closing, they had reached 108, 460% more. The valuation of 7.8 billion from which they started became 43,000 million at the stroke of a gong. The parallel markets had pointed to a historic day for Unitree and the purchase orders from small investors multiplied the offer by 8,000. The enthusiasm was real. Since then, however, its value has fallen by around 35%, leaving experts wondering whether this is a natural correction or the symptom of a bubble.
Unitree was the largest manufacturer of anthropomorphic robots - although it also produces other references, such as mechanized arms and sensors - in 2025, ahead of the also Chinese Agibot and pioneers such as Boston Dynamics. It shipped more than 5,500 of its bipedal machines and had a turnover of around 215 million, with a profit of about 36 million. Its IPO was not only a milestone for the company, whose official name is Yushu Technology, it was also a milestone for Beijing and its struggle for technological dominance.
Wang runs the business the same way he develops robots: he is pragmatic and rational. He doesn't quite fit the stereotype of the precocious genius and golden student, and he is probably not a successful engineer and billionaire thanks to one of the most demanding and rigid school models, but in spite of it. “The education system repressed me from a very young age and I never felt like I was achieving anything,” he told Chinese media LatePost last year.
He was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang province, in 1990. Science and technology began to interest him from a young age. At the age of ten, he found foreign documentaries on aviation or aerospace engineering fascinating and in one of them he saw the first experiments with robots by the future founder of Boston Dynamics. He was good at drawing and used his pay to buy components and parts to develop his talent for building mechanical and electronic objects. “You can say that I have been tinkering with this type of things since I was little,” he told another outlet. He wanted to be a researcher, but a classmate told him that he was approaching it wrong, that he should start his own company and hire more scientists to do it. The idea took root.
In high school he built a micro turbojet engine. In high school he made self-charging batteries and immersed himself in experiments that, on one occasion, could have cost him chlorine gas poisoning. Their grades, however, did not reflect this potential and were burdened by other subjects. “I failed English as a child and only passed it three times in my three years of high school,” he recalled to LatePost. In the areas that interested him, on the contrary, he was always among the best in the class. Before university, he confessed to the media, he had a certain inferiority complex compared to students from other better institutions, but then he stopped giving it importance.
In 2009 he began studying mechatronic engineering at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology. After graduating, he wanted to pursue a master's degree in engineering at Zhejiang University, but, again due to his difficulty with English, he did not achieve the necessary grade and enrolled at Shanghai University, which did not have the same prestige in the field. There he developed XDog, a quadruped robot with electric actuators much cheaper than the hydraulic ones normally used, with which he won second prize in a national entrepreneurship contest.
Although he had not ruled out the idea of creating a company, he did not have the necessary support. “I felt that my personal skills, my contacts and my financial situation were not up to par,” he said of that moment. He began working at the drone company DJI, but just a few months later, a video of his robodog captivated the media, the networks, and the occasional investor. In 2016 he founded Unitree and in 2017 he presented his first product, the evolution of XDog, Laikago.
Wang, CEO and CTO, didn't even want to hear about humanoid robots. The segment was still very green and there was no demand. Their popularity, according to Wang, increased due to Elon Musk's interest in them and advances in artificial intelligence. In February 2023, a team of three people set to work to evolve one of their quadrupeds towards bipedalism and in August presented the H1.
In the last two years, videos of Unitree robots dancing alongside humans or in a martial arts exhibition have gone around the world. But the revolution of these machines is today a social phenomenon rather than an industrial one. At the moment, its capabilities and applications in this environment are limited and few are used for productive or truly useful tasks. According to Time magazine, nearly three out of every four humanoids Unitree sells are destined for universities, individual developers and research institutions. 17% are destined for commercial spaces and only 9% end up in industry.
