Unitree Robotics' Superman robot has broken records in speed and agility, positioning China at the forefront of the robotics industry.
On August 17, Unitree Robotics posted a 30-second video to the Chinese social network Weibo. It showed a headless humanoid named Superman jumping six and a half feet off the ground and sprinting at more than 28 miles per hour—higher and faster than any human in history (Usain Bolt, who holds the record for fastest human, clocked a top speed of 27.78 mph). Two days later, the Hangzhou-based company went public on Shanghai’s stock market. Its stock briefly touched $163.66, a 629% premium over its offer price, valuing the company near $66 billion intraday before it closed at $50.8 billion for the day, an extraordinary valuation for a pure robotics company. It has only one precedent, another Chinese company called UBTech, which was valued at $4.9 billion on its IPO in December 2023.
It’s the last brick in the towering castle that China is building around embodied AI. Beijing has elevated robotics into a matter of strategic importance for its future economy amid its broader technology contest with the United States. The research firm Omdia puts China’s share of worldwide humanoid robot sales in 2025 at nearly 90%, while U.S.-based competitors Tesla, Figure AI, and Agility Robotics each managed only about 150 units delivered.
