{"slug": "unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants", "title": "Unitree vs. Shein: How August’s big China IPOs show how AI hype is leaving e-commerce giants behind", "summary": "Unitree, the Chinese humanoid robotics maker, is drawing more investor excitement than Shein's larger IPO, with its Shanghai STAR market debut expected this week after retail investors oversubscribed its offering by more than 8,000 times. Unitree is raising 6.1 billion Chinese yuan ($904 million) at a valuation of around $9 billion, while Shein aims to raise up to $3 billion in its Hong Kong IPO, reflecting a shift in investor appetite toward AI and hardware. Unitree reported 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in 2025 revenue, a fourfold increase from 2024, with net income of 600 million yuan ($89 million).", "body_md": "Size isn’t everything in China’s IPO markets.\n\nUnitree, perhaps China’s most famous humanoid robotics maker, is in the middle of an initial public offering on Shanghai’s STAR market, the city’s board for tech startups, with a trading debut expected for this week. Then, later this week, the fast-fashion platform Shein will reportedly start its own IPO in Hong Kong, with shares [potentially debuting](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/shein-eyes-hong-kong-market-debut-august-28-source-says-2026-08-13/) as soon as Aug. 28, according to Reuters.\n\nShein’s IPO dwarfs Unitree’s, with the fast fashion giant hoping to raise as much as $3 billion, roughly three times what Unitree is targeting. And yet Unitree’s IPO is getting most of the attention: Retail investors are scrambling to buy into the company, and secondary markets are predicting a massive jump in valuation after the startup’s debut.\n\nUnitree may be smaller and younger compared to Shein, which has a decade of global expansion under its belt. But in the eyes of investors, the robot maker is the more exciting bet, as appetites shift to AI and hardware, and away from e-commerce and internet platforms.\n\n**A robotics boom**\n\nUnitree, founded by Wang Xingxing in 2016, has become a fixture in China’s pop culture, thanks to its robots’ dance routines at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, China’s most-watched television broadcast.\n\nUnitree is [raising 6.1 billion Chinese yuan](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/what-is-unitree-why-are-chinas-humanoid-robot-makers-racing-list-2026-08-10/) ($904 million) in its IPO, at a market valuation of [around $9 billion](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/06/chinese-humanoid-robot-maker-unitree-prices-ipo-at-9-billion-valuation.html). The company claimed last week that the retail portion of its offering was more than [8,000 times oversubscribed](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/unitrees-shanghai-ipo-more-than-8000-times-oversubscribed-by-retail-investors-2026-08-10/).\n\nThe company reported 1.7 billion yuan ($252 million) in revenue last year, a fourfold increase from its revenue in 2024. Almost 45% of the company’s revenue came from overseas sales. Unlike many of its peers, Unitree is also profitable, with net income of 600 million yuan ($89 million) in 2025.\n\nOver 70% of Unitree’s humanoid robots go to academic and research institutions, though some Chinese state-owned enterprises and major manufacturers are dabbling with using robots from Unitree and other robotics startups.\n\nFellow robotics company UBTech, which is already listed in Hong Kong, posted [a net loss of $104 million](https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3348635/ubtech-surges-leaps-and-bounds-humanoid-robot-sales-jump-23-fold) last year; U.S. labs like Boston Dynamics and Figure AI are also unprofitable.\n\nUnitree is part of a broader wave of Chinese robotics manufacturers that are dominating the industry, not just in humanoid robots but also in quadrupeds, household robots, and industrial machines.\n\nSmart Analytics Global, a Californian research firm, calculated that Chinese firms were responsible for [97% of all humanoid robots shipments](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-10/china-humanoid-makers-hold-97-of-global-shipments-report-says) in the first half of the year. That same report notes that Unitree isn’t even the market leader any more; that title goes to Agibot, a Shanghai-based rival that’s currently preparing for a Hong Kong listing later this year.\n\nThat dominance is spurring concern in Washington. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission in late July banned imports of [foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots](https://fortune.com/2026/07/29/chinas-robot-makers-shipped-25x-more-units-than-u-s-rivals-in-2025-so-america-banned-them/). “These devices could create supply chain vulnerabilities that could disrupt U.S. economic and national security,” the FCC said [in its announcement](https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-423682A1.pdf).\n\n**Shein’s long road to an IPO**\n\nShein’s IPO is significantly larger than Unitree’s. Media reports from the *Financial Times** *and [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/shein-eyes-company-valuation-around-25-billion-hong-kong-ipo-sources-say-2026-08-17/) suggest that Shein is targeting a valuation between $25 billion and $30 billion. That figure would mark a deep discount from the $64 billion valuation Shein fetched in 2024, let alone the $100 billion valuation it got in 2022.\n\nAccording [to its prospectus,](https://www1.hkexnews.hk/app/sehk/2026/108766/documents/sehk26072600126.pdf) Shein generated $41.2 billion in revenue last year, up from $38.8 billion in 2024. It earned about $2 billion in profit. Europe is now Shein’s largest market, making up 35.4% of its revenue, compared to 24.1% from the U.S.\n\nGrowing protectionism is squeezing Shein’s profits. Shein long benefited from “de minimis” rules, which exempted small packages from customs duties. The U.S. [eliminated these exemptions](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/suspending-duty-free-de-minimis-treatment-for-all-countries/) last year, and Europe [followed suit](https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-impose-3-euro-duty-small-e-commerce-parcels-july-2026-2025-12-12/) in July.\n\n“Although it remains too early to fully assess, it is possible that trends in the EU could be generally in line with or exceed the impact observed in the U.S. after the removal of the U.S. de minimis exemption,” Shein admitted in its IPO prospectus.\n\nShein’s long path to an IPO might also have done damage to its valuation. The company first pursued a New York listing, following in the footsteps of other Chinese tech giants like [Alibaba](https://fortune.com/company/alibaba-group-holding/) and Baidu. Yet U.S. officials [raised concerns](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/21/shein-us-ipo-is-dead-experts-say.html) about allegations of forced labor in Shein’s supply chain and the platform’s handling of customer data.\n\nShein even moved its headquarters to Singapore in order to smooth its path to a U.S. listing—an attempt at “[Singapore-washing](https://fortune.com/2026/03/09/singapore-washing-us-china-shein-manus/)”—to no avail.\n\nThe company then [considered a London IPO](https://fortune.com/2024/02/26/shein-ipo-london-not-new-york-sec-fast-fashion/), yet Chinese regulators never gave approval for Shein’s overseas listing. That left Hong Kong as the last option.\n\nIt may also be that Shein’s time has passed. E-commerce boomed during the pandemic, when shoppers, flush with stimulus cash, splurged on new items. Now, rising protectionism and inflation have made growth harder for global e-commerce platforms.\n\n[Investor](https://fortune.com/company/investor/) attention is instead shifting to AI infrastructure and hardware. Last month, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) [raised $8.6 billion](https://fortune.com/2026/08/02/cxmts-blockbuster-ipo-will-test-whether-chinas-memory-makers-are-ready-for-the-spotlight-it-does-not-yet-mean-china-is-broadly-catching-up/) in its own Shanghai STAR Market IPO. Shares surged by as much as 530% on their first day of trading; the chipmaker, the world’s No. 4 producer of dynamic random-access memory, is now the most valuable Chinese company, ahead of [Tencent](https://fortune.com/company/tencent-holdings/).\n\nSeveral other AI companies are[ considering IPOs](https://fortune.com/2026/07/23/moonshot-deepseek-great-chinese-ai-ipo-rush/) in either Shanghai or Hong Kong, including AI developers DeepSeek and Moonshot AI as well as chipmaker Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp.\n\n*breaks the traditional barrier between audience and newsroom. The show transforms*\n\n**Fortune Daily*** Fortune*’s trusted reporting into actionable, conversational, and entertaining insights for an emerging class of business leaders.\n\n**Watch here.**", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants", "canonical_source": "https://fortune.com/2026/08/17/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-commerce-giants-behind/", "published_at": "2026-08-17 14:19:26+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-17 14:40:48.071169+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "robotics", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["Unitree", "Shein", "Wang Xingxing", "UBTech", "Agibot", "Boston Dynamics", "Figure AI", "Smart Analytics Global"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/unitree-vs-shein-how-augusts-big-china-ipos-show-how-ai-hype-is-leaving-e-giants.jsonld"}}