Gasgoo Munich- On August 19, the 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC) opened in Beijing's Yizhuang district. That same day, Unitree Robotics debuted on the STAR Market, surging over 600% at the open to become the "first humanoid robot stock on the A-share market."
With the conference and IPO unfolding simultaneously, Yizhuang has never been this crowded. But just how much room for imagination does Unitree's listing unlock for the robotics sector?
This exhibition might just be the best answer.
Even Super 8 Costs 900 Yuan! Yizhuang's "Overflowing" Heat
Xiao Chen, who has worked in Yizhuang for years, is long used to the late-summer robot conference. Yet this year's scale still caught him off guard.
"I never felt this robot conference was hot before, but the crowds this year are real," he told Gasgoo.
Xiao Chen revealed that hotels within a six-kilometer radius of the convention center have collectively hiked rates. Even a standard Super 8 now asks 900 yuan a night, while one hotel adjacent to the venue lists a king room at over 5,000 yuan.
The foot traffic pouring into Yizhuang has far exceeded the norm.
Image Source: Gasgoo on-site photo
Among them are exhibitors, investors, journalists, and contestants from 26 countries and regions. They are all here for a single target: robots.
In fact, this year's WRC lives up to the hype: over 300 companies are exhibiting, a 36% annual increase, with more than 3,000 exhibits and over 300 product debuts. The exhibition space spans 50,000 square meters, including the debut of a 20,000-square-meter innovation hall. Heavyweights like Unitree, Galaxea AI, and UBTECH are all out in force.
Inside the venue, humanoid robots are no longer just exhibits—they are "volunteers." MagicLab's "Xiao Mai" wears a red vest to guide visitors, while other robots hand out candy and take photos, vividly echoing the theme of "human-machine symbiosis."
"Can work, can deliver, can sell"—that has become the core focus of this year's conference.
Major manufacturers have scaled back the acrobatic stunts, shifting the spotlight to real-world commercial applications.
At the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center booth, several Tiangong 3.0 robots performed a group dance and demonstrated their full-chain capabilities—listening, thinking, and executing—through tug-of-war and navigation tasks. Making its debut, the 1.35-meter, 39-kilogram Tiangong Omni tackled obstacle courses, stairs, and crawling on site, showcasing its motion control and environmental adaptability.
Galaxea AI transformed its 500-square-meter booth into a "productivity testing ground." They built what they call the world's first robotic front warehouse supporting online ordering and fully automated closed-loop fulfillment. Users place random orders via a mini-program, and robots autonomously identify goods, plan routes, pick items, and pack bags—completing the entire cycle from order to delivery.
On the conference's opening day, Unitree Robotics officially listed on the STAR Market. Priced at 150.80 yuan per share, the stock soared to 1,100 yuan at the open, pushing its market capitalization above 400 billion yuan. A single lottery allocation yielded a paper profit of up to 470,000 yuan, shattering the record for opening-day gains on the board.
Industry data is equally impressive. Official figures show revenue for large-scale robotics enterprises exceeded 300 billion yuan in 2025, with an average annual growth rate of over 20% for the past five years. In the first half of this year, revenue reached 165.5 billion yuan, a 24.5% year-on-year increase. Robotics technology and products are now widely applied across the economy and society, becoming a key force in driving high-quality development.
Where Is the Heat Coming From? It's Not Just Unitree
Xiao Chen's intuition hit the mark: Unitree's IPO is the most visible footnote to this industry fever.
Yet, tracing the trajectory of humanoid robots from a niche tech topic to a mainstream conversation over the past year reveals something bigger: this isn't the work of one company alone. It is a triple resonance of capital, technology, and policy.
Capital was the first match to light the fire. In 2025, massive funding flooded into embodied intelligence, and order volumes across the robotics industry exploded, with top players seeing orders exceed 1 billion yuan. From dancing in floral coats at the Spring Festival Gala in a "cyber yangge" performance to being rented out as extras at malls, weddings, and corporate parties later in the year, the hype has persisted.
Now, Unitree's IPO process is pushing that capital fervor to a climax. Unitree's application was accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 20 and approved by the listing committee on June 1—a sprint of just 73 days.
Technological breakthroughs provide the substance behind the hype. Unitree founder Wang Xingxing previously predicted that the "ChatGPT moment" for embodied intelligence could arrive within two to three years. That would mean robots saying a final goodbye to the "remote-control toy" era, capable of working independently in unfamiliar environments without the need for debugging.
Image Source: Gasgoo on-site photo
Hardware costs are also plummeting. In 2026, the average manufacturing cost of a general-purpose humanoid robot has fallen to one-third of its 2023 level. Plummeting costs, combined with technological iteration, are enabling humanoid robots—once confined to laboratories—to truly enter factories, warehouses, and shopping malls.
Policy support is ramping up as well. In June, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission jointly launched a special action for 2026 focused on real-world training for humanoid robots and embodied intelligence. The goal is to normalize the deployment and scale the application of humanoid robots in actual production and living environments.
Industry data confirms this trend: China produced over 40,000 humanoid robots in the first half of the year, with the full-year total expected to exceed 100,000. Global shipments jumped 272% year-on-year, with Chinese manufacturers accounting for more than 97% of that share.
TrendForce estimates China's humanoid robot market will reach 15 billion yuan in 2026 and maintain growth of at least 60% in 2027.
On August 20, Wang Xingxing will attend the main forum to look ahead at the next decade for humanoid robots.
A steady stream of visitors is still pouring into Yizhuang, so hotels within a six-kilometer radius are likely to stay "hot" for a few more days.
