Unitree Robotics, Going Public Is Just the Beginning

AI Research and Development Investment Increase: How Will It Affect Company Profitability?

Reported by Zhao Yunfan, 21st Century Business Herald

On March 20, after two rounds of pre-approval, Yushu Technology finally revealed its mysterious face to the public through its prospectus. When we opened the prospectus of this star tech company, we found that it is a “non-typical tech stock.”

With a gross profit margin of up to 60%, very low operating expenses, and compared to many companies investing heavily in R&D yet struggling to turn a profit, Yushu Technology seems more like an innovative consumer business model.

However, after Yushu Technology’s successful IPO, whether in operational strategy, business strategy, or financial performance, the future of Yushu Technology will undergo dramatic changes from its past.

“Cash-rich” Yushu

Yushu Technology is not in a hurry to raise funds, and Wang Xingxing values his “voting rights” even more — this is the first piece of information revealed in the company’s prospectus and also a subtle hint from the capital structure since its share reform.

Public data shows that before completing the share reform during the guidance period, Yushu Technology’s registered capital was 2.889 million yuan, which increased to 364 million yuan (364 million shares) after the share reform.

According to Article 2.1.1, Clause 3 of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Sci-Tech Innovation Board Listing Rules: “The publicly issued shares reach more than 25% of the total shares of the company; if the company’s total share capital exceeds 400 million yuan, the proportion of publicly issued shares shall be more than 10%.”

Reviewing the fundraising plan, Yushu Technology plans to raise 4.202 billion yuan, with no more than 40.4464 million new shares issued, accounting for no less than 10% of the total shares after issuance. This means that the total share capital after issuance will just hit the 400 million share mark.

In other words, in the early stages of share reform, Yushu Technology aimed to set the share issuance scale at the 10% lower limit.

Yushu Technology is not the only “stock-conscious” company; other similar firms include Loongson Zhongke, Yingstone Innovation, Muxi Co., Ltd., and Cambrian, all star companies on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board favored by the capital market. They all set their registered capital during share reform at around 340 million to 360 million yuan and allocated about 10% of total shares for fundraising.

From the perspective of fundraising directions, Yushu Technology does not seem to have urgent financing plans. The funds allocated for capacity expansion are only 660 million yuan, less than 15% of the total fundraising plan.

At the same time, Yushu Technology’s “not rushing to raise money” is also related to its growth model. From the financial reports, the factors driving the company’s performance growth do not include R&D expenses or marketing costs. The company’s overall endogenous growth is strong, with low marginal costs for business expansion.

Financial reports show that Yushu Technology’s gross profit margin has steadily increased from 44.18% in 2022 to 60.27% in 2025, achieving gross margin growth amid continuous price reductions, demonstrating strong cost control. In the first three quarters of 2025, sales expenses were only 76 million yuan, accounting for 6.51% of revenue, and R&D expenses were 90.2 million yuan, only 7.73% of revenue.

These data indicate that Yushu Technology is not only a cool tech company but also a top-tier consumer enterprise with a business model that does not rely on high capital expenditure.

R&D Investment May Challenge the “Income Statement”

Objectively reviewing Yushu Technology’s financials, it’s not hard to see that the proportion of R&D spending is relatively low, and expenses for market expansion are also modest, which inadvertently boosts gross profit margins.

However, this is not fixed. With the IPO and the company shifting its development focus from simple robot motion control algorithms and small brains to embodied intelligent large models’ “brains,” Yushu Technology may increase capital expenditure and R&D efforts after going public.

Clues come from the company’s prospectus and responses during inquiries.

For example, in response to the second round of pre-approval inquiries, Yushu Technology clarified its model iteration plan, aiming to release a general humanoid robot embodied foundational model within three years, targeting “systematic scene generalization, command generalization, action generalization, and task generalization — four core capabilities.”

Generalization — rather than developing embodied intelligent models for single scenarios — will inevitably mean significant R&D and capital expenditure in the future.

The fundraising plan also shows that about half of the funds will be invested in intelligent robot model R&D projects, with the remaining quarter allocated to robot body R&D. Overall R&D investment accounts for 85%.

Currently, Yushu Technology’s R&D expenses mainly cover salaries for R&D personnel (including social security and bonuses). The prospectus shows that the average annual salary per R&D staff was 302,500 yuan in 2022, 377,200 yuan in 2023, and estimated at about 460,000 yuan in 2025. For large firms, this is not considered “high salary.” Meanwhile, employee compensation totaled 57.08 million yuan, accounting for 63.27% of R&D expenses, a relatively high proportion.

Based on the company’s current accounting policies, it may treat most R&D costs as expenses, similar to other Sci-Tech Innovation Board companies. This trend is reflected in the company’s intangible assets, which as of September 2025, amounted to only 1.9177 million yuan.

In the future, if the company invests heavily in embodied intelligence R&D, it will compete more fiercely for talent within the AI industry and increase computing power resource investments. The company’s R&D personnel salaries, one-time computing costs, and high depreciation from compute card investments (generally depreciated over three to five years, or prudently over two years) will also impact the income statement to some extent.

“Huge Variable” in Capacity

Of course, Yushu Technology’s “imagination” still depends on the progress of robot mass production and sales.

According to the prospectus, from January to September 2025, the production and sales rate exceeded 95%, meaning that aside from delivery friction and inventory, Yushu’s robots nearly achieved full capacity and sales.

The prospectus shows that in the first nine months of last year, nearly 4,000 humanoid robots were sold, with a projected shipment of over 5,500 units in 2025. Including quadruped robots, this sales volume supported the company’s revenue of 1.167 billion yuan and corresponding net profit before non-recurring gains and losses in the first three quarters.

Based on the fundraising plan, the new manufacturing base will have a capacity of 75,000 humanoid robots and 115,000 quadruped robots. Just from the humanoid robot capacity, this means a roughly 12-fold increase compared to the 2025 shipment volume.

Why such a huge capacity increase? Industry insiders told us that Yushu Technology has mainly relied on manual assembly for production but is now automating some product lines and opening molds.

However, transitioning from manual assembly to automated production for humanoid robots will face challenges such as consistency and yield issues.

For example, within the industry, it has been observed that the same embodied model or motion control algorithm can perform quite differently on different robots of the same model. During complex dynamic operations, consistency issues become more prominent, and debugging at the factory becomes more difficult.

Meanwhile, current humanoid robots are relatively simple in configuration. As more multi-functional dexterous hands and core SoC chips are added, integration difficulty will increase significantly, testing the manufacturer’s mass production capability and product quality consistency.

After all, Yushu Technology is charting a path that no one has traveled before globally.

In summary, before going public, Yushu Technology could be considered a company combining strong technological attributes with an excellent business model. But as Wang Xingxing said, going public is like a “coming of age” for Yushu Technology. After “maturity,” it still needs to face one growth challenge after another, just like all highly scrutinized enterprises.