Unitree Robotics is adding an AI lab to its shareholder list as part of the company’s Shanghai listing. A stock-exchange filing published August 6 shows DeepSeek subscribing for 933,399 shares worth 140.8 million yuan, roughly $21M, and agreeing to co-develop models for humanoid robots with the Hangzhou robot maker.
The stake equals 2.31 percent of the IPO’s strategic placement and carries a 36-month lock-up. The pact links the two companies’ roadmaps: Unitree gets priority access to DeepSeek training services, while DeepSeek favors Unitree when purchasing robots or exploring embodied-AI applications.
Unitree, trading on the STAR Market under ticker 688836, priced its offering at 150.80 yuan per share and sold 40.45 million new shares to raise about 6.1 billion yuan at a valuation near 61 billion yuan, roughly $9B. That makes it the first mainland-listed humanoid robot maker, with subscriptions opening August 10.
The deal targets the industry’s biggest bottleneck: a robot brain that can turn instructions into reliable physical action in unfamiliar spaces. DeepSeek brings strong language and reasoning models but has not folded vision into its flagship line, while Unitree offers machines and the physical-world data they generate. A Tencent investment vehicle is also among the strategic investors.
Unitree’s 2025 revenue more than quadrupled to 1.7 billion yuan, with US sales making up 13.3 percent and flagged as a tariff risk.
