On February 21, with the theme of "Molding the World The opening ceremony of the 2025 Global Developer Pioneer Conference (GDC) was held at the Xuhui West Bund Grand Theatre in Shanghai. Yushu humanoid robot "walking the dog" caused everyone to watch. At present, Unitree robot shipments are the first in the world, and the sales of robot dogs have accounted for 60% to 70% of the world.

|What is the strength of Unitree robot?

Unitree Technology was founded in 2016 by Wang Xingxing, and its predecessor was an employee of DJI. With only 4 members at the beginning of its establishment, it successfully developed the motor, drive system and main control unit in just one year, and built a new mechanical structure and control system of the whole machine, and launched the world's first consumer-grade quadruped robot Laikago, with a retail price of 20,000 yuan.

With the advancement of technology and the iteration of products, Unitree released AlienGo in 2019, which was the world's largest quadruped robot capable of completing somersaults at that time. In the following years, Unitree has successively launched a number of quadruped robots, including UnitreeA1, UnitreeGo1, B1, GO2, B2, B2-W, etc., which cover from industrial applications (such as security inspection, public rescue) to consumer applications for the mass market.

In August 2023, Unitree launched the first full-size universal humanoid robot H1 that can run in China, marking the company's breakthrough in the field of humanoid robots. Then, in May 2024, Unitree released the G1, a robot that has attracted widespread attention for its excellent functionality (such as cooking fried eggs, smashing walnuts with bare hands, etc.) and improved walking ability, and is known as "the strongest robot on the surface". In particular, the G1 has a starting price of only 99,000 RMB, which is a significant price advantage over other similar products in the market.

With the advantages of technological innovation and product performance, Unitree occupies an absolute leading position in the global quadruped robot market. According to the data of the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute, Unitree's global quadruped robot sales share in 2023 will reach 69.75%, and the market size share will be 40.65%, so it is known as "ground DJI" by the industry.

In contrast, while Boston Dynamics' technology presentations have always been the talk of the town, its commercialization has been difficult. Unitree has not only achieved great commercial success in the field of quadruped robots, but also began to emerge in the field of humanoid robots, becoming one of the world's largest manufacturers of humanoid robots with the largest order volume.

Although Unitree has not been involved in the field of humanoid robots for a long time, due to the effective use of the underlying hardware and software technology of quadruped robots, it took only half a year for the company to go public from the start of the project to the listing of H1. This shows that Unitree is not only in a leading position in technological innovation, but also shows strong execution in the process of rapidly promoting the commercialization of products. Based on this, Unitree is very likely to occupy an important position in the future humanoid robot market.

What is Unitree's market position?

Unitree has been able to achieve its current leading position in the market because of its strong technological advantages. These technical advantages include high torque density motor technology (self-developed motor M series, the cost is only 50% of that of imported motors), dynamic motion control algorithms, modular joint design, lightweight and material innovation, and perception and AI interaction systems.

Detailed explanation of technical advantages

Hardware: Unitree adopts a lower cost and lightweight technical route, which is significantly different from the technical route of Tesla's Optimus Prime robot, so as to have obvious advantages in production cost and future mass production and commercialization capabilities. Unitree's self-developed motor M series not only has superior performance, but also the cost is only half of that of imported motors, which greatly reduces production costs.

AI Software: At present, the global AI architecture roadmap is not clear. The two common AI architectures are to directly apply the large language multimodal model to the robot and combine it with part of the underlying operation motion set to complete the task; The other is to train by collecting a large amount of movement data. Tesla Optimus Prime uses the latter. Although Unitree is also developing AI general models, due to its late development, it has a small probability of being the first in the world to make AI models in the future. Competitors such as Huawei and Nvidia are stronger in this area.

Wang Xingxing has predicted that by the end of 2025, at least one laboratory or company will be able to develop the first generation of AI models for general-purpose robots, and believes that it is possible to promote the application in factory or service industry scenarios in 2026.

Partners & Supply Chain

Unitree not only performs well in independent research and development, but also has a group of core suppliers and shareholders as partners to jointly promote its technological innovation and product development:

Motor & Drive Field: The main suppliers are Green Harmonic and Harmony (Japan).

Bearing/screw field: The main suppliers are Changsheng Bearing, Beite Technology, Best and Shuanglin Co., Ltd.

Reducer field: The main suppliers are Zhongda and Green Harmonic.

Dexterous hand field: The main suppliers are Zhaowei Electromechanical and Mingzhi Electric.

Other parts and components: including Kingfa Technology, Jiangsu Leili, Allwinner Technology, Dongmu Co., Ltd., Obi Zhongguang and Hesai Technology, etc.

In addition, Meituan's largest external shareholder is Meituan, and other major shareholders with smaller stakes include Jingxing Paper (1.8%), Jihua Group (0.022%), Kingfa Technology (4.6%), Sangfor (0.6279%) and Shiyida (0.011%).

Business Partners

Unitree's disclosed business partners mainly include Shengtong Co., Ltd., Polytechnic Optical Technology, Hanwei Technology and iFLYTEK. These partners have provided Unitree with extensive technical support and market resources, further consolidating its position in the industry.

What are the core suppliers of Unitree Robot?

Unitree is backed by nearly 20 A-share listed companies, which have demonstrated their potential for future gains through market voting (i.e., stock price increases) in the past few months. According to Wind statistics, from September 24 last year to February 11 this year, the top three companies were Changsheng Bearing, Zhaowei Electromechanical and Shuanglin Shares. Next, we will conduct a detailed analysis of these three companies from the perspectives of cooperation depth and fundamentals.

Depth of cooperation

Changsheng Bearing: It is in a leading position in China's self-lubricating bearing industry, focusing on medium and high-end products. It provides Unitree with key components such as roller screws and plain bearings, and is one of the core suppliers identified.

Zhaowei Electromechanical: It mainly provides dexterous hand products for Unitree, and has successfully cut into Huawei's industrial chain, and is expected to further enter the supply chain of OEMs such as Tesla Optimus and FigureAI in the future, showing strong growth potential.

Shuanglin shares: Mainly engaged in auto parts, plastics, hardware and molds. In the field of humanoid robots, Shuanglin Co., Ltd. provides balls, screw products and related transmission components for Unitree, but it is still in the customer verification stage and faces certain uncertainties.

Fundamental comparison

To get a more complete assessment of the investment value of these three companies, let's compare their fundamental data:

Revenue compound annual growth rate (2019Q3-2024Q3):

Changsheng Bearing: 13.31%

Zhaowei Electromechanical: -4.14%

Shuanglin shares: 0.37%

Compound annual growth rate of net profit attributable to parent company (same period as above):

Changsheng Bearing: 13.94%

Zhaowei Electromechanical: -2.34%

Shuanglin shares: 92% (note: the base of 2019Q3 is very low)

Profitability (as of the end of the first three quarters of 2024):

Gross margin on sales:

Changsheng Bearing: 34.8%

Zhaowei Electromechanical: 31.55%

Shuanglin shares: 20.4%

Net profit margin on sales:

Changsheng bearing: 20.8%

Zhaowei Electromechanical: 15%

Shuanglin shares: 11.33%

From the above data, it can be seen that Changsheng Bearing not only performs well in revenue and net profit growth, but also has the highest sales gross profit margin and net profit margin, indicating that it has strong business competition barriers and good cost control capabilities. In particular, its selling expense ratio is only 1.96% and has continued to decline over the years.

In contrast, although the profitability of Zhaowei Electromechanical is slightly inferior, its R&D expense ratio has increased significantly in the past five years, showing the company's strong investment in technological innovation. Although the net profit growth rate of Shuanglin shares seems to be high, this is mainly due to the low base in 2019Q3, and its fundamental performance is weaker than the other two companies on the whole.