A Dancing Robot Company Just Became Worth More Than Baidu.

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1.  Unitree goes public and the stock goes vertical. China's most famous robot maker listed on Shanghai's STAR Market on Wednesday, and shares closed their first day up more than 460%. The IPO raised about $905 million and was oversubscribed more than 8,000 times, a record for the exchange. The company behind the internet's dancing, backflipping androids is now worth around $66 billion, more than Baidu. See how the debut unfolded, or read why the surge was this extreme.

2.  Agility Robotics books its own ticket to Wall Street. The Oregon company behind Digit, the warehouse humanoid already working for Amazon, Schaeffler, and Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada, is going public through a $2.5 billion SPAC merger with Churchill Capital Corp XI. The deal brings in over $620 million and creates the only US-listed pure-play humanoid company with paying commercial customers. Read the official announcement or what it signals for the industry.

3.  Beijing turns into the robot capital of the world for a week. The World Robot Conference ran from August 19 to 23 with more than 300 exhibitors and 3,000 products, then the second World Humanoid Robot Games opened with 666 teams and 2,056 robots from 16 countries. Events run from boxing to parcel sorting. Watch the robots box and dance, then check the full Games rundown.

Bonus read:  Markets are treating robotics as the next AI trade. CNBC's Daily Open explains the robot rally in three minutes.

The pop. Unitree's 460% debut says investors believe the humanoid era has arrived. Retail demand was so intense that the odds of winning an allocation fell to 0.018%, and AI lab DeepSeek bought into the IPO alongside Tencent. When an AI lab buys into a robot maker, the market pays attention.

The fine print. Unitree booked $252 million in revenue and $89 million in profit last year, so this is a real business, not a science project. Still, around 70% of its humanoids went to universities and research labs, and fewer than 10% of sales are commercial deployments. Robots that impress on stage have not yet proven themselves on the factory floor.

The cold war. Washington banned imports of new foreign-made robots last month over national security concerns, cutting Unitree off from a market that supplied about 13% of its revenue. Beijing is pushing robotics as a national priority at the same time. Physical AI is now a live front in the US and China tech rivalry.

The stampede. Rivals AgiBot and Leju are lining up their own listings, Agility is taking the SPAC route in the US, and Wood Mackenzie expects the global humanoid fleet to pass 10 million units by 2035. Analysts call Unitree the bellwether. If it delivers, the whole pipeline opens. Here is who files next.

The real question. Omdia analyst Lian Jye Su says the single thing he is watching is how real the demand turns out to be. A $66 billion valuation on $252 million of revenue prices in a future where humanoids work everywhere, for everyone. The IPO answered whether investors want robots. It did not answer whether customers do.

Superman lands. Three days before the IPO, Unitree unveiled a robot it calls Superman, developed in just three months. The company says it jumps two meters from a standing position and runs 12.66 meters per second, faster than most humans sprint.

Robot fight night. Clips of humanoids boxing and dancing at the World Robot Conference are all over social feeds this week, and the machines take hits and recover balance like trained fighters.

Laundry duty. The quieter demos may matter more. Robots at the conference folded clothes, played table tennis, and sorted goods, the boring jobs that actually pay.

LG enters the chat. LG is building an Nvidia-powered bipedal humanoid for an early 2027 reveal, pulling actuators, sensors, and batteries from across its own group companies.

The new crown. After the debut surge, Unitree is worth more than Figure AI, the most valuable US robotics startup at $39 billion. The humanoid valuation race now runs through Shanghai.

PROMPT STATION

Turn any chore into a humanoid robot demo reel

Robot launch videos follow a formula: white studio hardware, dramatic lighting, one impossible task. This prompt recreates that exact look in any AI image tool, from Midjourney to Nano Banana, using a chore from your own to-do list. Try it while the robot news is still everywhere and your version will feel ripped from the headlines.

Swap [YOUR CHORE] with folding laundry, watering houseplants, or packing school lunches. For extra realism, add a lighting cue such as "golden hour side light through large windows" or "cool studio softbox glow."