Chinese humanoid robots start sorting parcels at post offices — Unitree stock surges 7x after IPO

The World Robot Conference has opened in Beijing and will run through Sunday. More than 300 companies, mostly Chinese, are participating and have brought over 2,000 exhibits. Manufacturers have announced the launch of more than 150 new products at the event.

The conference is taking place amid a surge of investor interest in humanoid robots, which are seen as a potential new driver of industrial growth for China and a new arena for technological competition with the United States. Shares of Unitree, China's most prominent humanoid robot maker, have surged more than sevenfold since the company went public. Retail investor demand for the stock exceeded the available supply by 8,000 times. Startups Lumos Robotics and the robotics division of Chery Automobile have announced their intention to go public as well.

Madison Huang, a senior executive at Nvidia and the daughter of the company's CEO, attended the conference. She oversees marketing for Nvidia's robotics platform and the Omniverse system, which are designed to help robots perceive and act in the real world. Representatives from the American company RealSense, which produces machine vision systems for robots, also discussed their partnerships with Chinese companies.

Leju demonstrated how humanoid robots can move and load boxes. At the Robotera booth, a humanoid robot mounted on a wheeled pedestal sorted parcels — more than a hundred such machines are already in use across 15 warehouses of China's postal service. DexForce showed robots working on an assembly line, packaging mobile phones.