Unitree vs. Shein: How August’s big China IPOs show how AI hype is leaving e-commerce giants behind

Size isn’t everything in China’s IPO markets.

Unitree, 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 as soon as Aug.

28, according to Reuters.

Shein’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.

Unitree 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.

A robotics boom Unitree, 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.

Unitree is raising 6.1 billion Chinese yuan ($904 million) in its IPO, at a market valuation of around $9 billion .

The company claimed last week that the retail portion of its offering was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed .

The 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.