Unitree's first quarterly report as a listed company: revenue up 70%, profit down as AI spending jumps

Unitree, the Chinese maker of humanoid and four-legged robots, released its third-quarter results on October 28 through a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It is the company's first quarterly report since its August debut on the STAR Market.

Faster sales, thinner profit

Revenue for the July–September quarter rose 69.9% from a year earlier to 665 million yuan, according to Caixin and TechNode. Net profit attributable to shareholders went the other way, falling 17.4% to 112.7 million yuan. Reuters, as carried by The Standard, noted that analysts had expected about 224 million yuan.

Over the first nine months, revenue reached 1.82 billion yuan, up 55.7%. Reported net profit rose 270.5% to 386.7 million yuan, but the company attributed much of that jump to a large share-based payment expense booked a year earlier. Excluding non-recurring items, TechNode reports that nine-month profit fell 18.8% to 349 million yuan.

Where the money is going

The main pressure on margins is spending. Quarterly R&D expenses rose 249.6% to 127 million yuan, equal to 19.1% of revenue. Caixin reports the money went to embodied AI models, computing resources, research staff and new products. Selling expenses also climbed, to 230 million yuan from 76 million a year earlier.

Unitree has been releasing its own AI models since the second half of 2025, including vision-language-action systems, as it tries to answer criticism that its robots move well but lack the intelligence to carry out complex tasks on their own. Caixin also points to inventory of 1.02 billion yuan at the end of September, nearly three times the level at the end of 2025; the company has not explained the build-up.

A test for the sector

Investors are watching Unitree as one of the few profitable Chinese robot makers. Its shares had fallen almost 55% since the August debut before rallying more than 65% in the two weeks before the report, prompting an October 21 warning from the company about valuation risk.

The backdrop is a volatile market: Reuters reports that the STAR50 index has dropped 40% since July and that regulators have slowed IPOs of humanoid robot makers. Whether Unitree's heavier AI spending translates into products that sell beyond research and demonstration uses remains the open question.