Unitree Robotics reported its Q3 2026 earnings on Wednesday evening, October 28, the first results since the Hangzhou humanoid maker listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market on August 19. Revenue for the July to September quarter rose 69.93% from a year earlier to 665 million yuan, about $100 million. Net profit went the other way. Profit attributable to shareholders fell 17.4% to 112.7 million yuan, well short of the 224 million yuan analysts had expected, according to Reuters.
The reason is spending. Unitree more than tripled its quarterly research and development budget, and it says the money is going into embodied-AI models, computing power and its research team. For a company that investors treat as the test case for China’s humanoid robot listings, that trade-off is the story.
- Q3 revenue: 665 million yuan (about $100 million), up 69.93% year on year.
- Q3 net profit: 112.7 million yuan attributable to shareholders, down 17.4% and below the 224 million yuan analysts expected (Reuters).
- Why profit fell: Q3 R&D jumped 249.58% to 127.04 million yuan, about 19% of revenue.
- The catch: nine-month profit is up 270.5%, but that’s mostly a low base. Excluding one-off items it fell 18.78%.
Unitree Q3 2026 earnings: the numbers
The filing covers the three months to September 30. Here are the main lines, with the year-on-year change for each.
| Item | Q3 2026 | First nine months |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 665 million yuan, +69.93% | 1.817 billion yuan, +55.71% |
| Net profit attributable to shareholders | 112.7 million yuan, −17.4% | 386.7 million yuan, +270.5% |
| Net profit excluding non-recurring items | 105 million yuan, −17.42% | 349 million yuan, −18.78% |
| Total profit | 112 million yuan, −27.78% | 413 million yuan, +143.05% |
| R&D spending | 127.04 million yuan, +249.58% | 263 million yuan, +191.48% |
Two of those rows need context. The nine-month profit jump looks huge because last year’s figure was dragged down by a large one-time share-based payment expense, which Unitree itself cites, along with higher gross profit. Strip out one-off items and nine-month profit fell. The quarter also shrank from the one before it: CLS, a Shanghai financial wire, calculated that Q3 net profit was down about 49.55% from the second quarter’s roughly 224 million yuan.
Revenue is the healthy part. Sales grew faster in the third quarter than across the year as a whole, so growth sped up rather than slowed. The quarterly filing doesn’t split revenue by product, and none of the coverage reports how many robots Unitree shipped in the quarter. For a rough guide, National Business Daily notes that humanoid robots made up 51.78% of Unitree’s main business revenue in 2025, quadrupeds 41.62% and components 6.19%.
Where the R&D money is going
Quarterly research spending of 127.04 million yuan equals about 19.1% of revenue. Over nine months, R&D reached 14.47% of revenue, up 6.74 percentage points from a year earlier. Unitree told the exchange the increase came from bigger investment in embodied-intelligence large models, computing capacity and its R&D team.
That fits what the company has been showing in public. It has been open-sourcing its robot models, most recently UnifoLM-WLA-1.0, a 6-billion-parameter model it says drives its G1 humanoid through 64 tasks. Founder Wang Xingxing has also talked publicly about testing OpenAI’s GPT-6 on Unitree robots. Hardware sales are paying for the software push, and in this quarter the software push won.
Cash flow shows the same squeeze. Operating cash flow for the first nine months was 194 million yuan, down 54.69%. Unitree says purchases, staff pay, sales costs and research spending all grew with revenue. Inventory rose 177.2% from the end of last year to about 1.02 billion yuan, according to CLS. That could mean Unitree is building stock ahead of orders. The filing excerpts we’ve seen don’t say.
The balance sheet after the IPO
The listing changed the company’s size overnight. Total assets reached 10.156 billion yuan at the end of September, up 216.52% from the end of 2025, and shareholders’ equity rose 242.10% to 8.91 billion yuan. Unitree says that’s mainly the IPO money arriving. CLS puts cash on hand at about 7.35 billion yuan.
So the profit dip isn’t a funding problem. Unitree is choosing to spend, and it has the cash to keep doing it. The question for shareholders is how long they’ll accept falling quarterly profit while revenue climbs.
The same evening, Unitree said a wholly owned subsidiary will put 20 million yuan into the Hangzhou Embodied Intelligence Application Pilot Base, a city-backed testing center it already part-owns. It’s a related-party deal, and Unitree’s stake stays at 10% because other investors are adding money too.
How Unitree’s stock got here
The results land after a wild two months. Reuters reports that the shares fell almost 55% from their August debut, then rose more than 65% in the past two weeks. Unitree issued an abnormal trading announcement on October 21 warning investors about valuation risk. JPMorgan raised its rating on the stock on Monday, Reuters said, and the rally picked up after Unitree released the H2-X “Kung Fu Legend Guardian” video last week.
The stock closed at 695.90 yuan on October 28, before the results came out, giving Unitree a market value of about 281.5 billion yuan, according to National Business Daily. That’s about 155 times its revenue for the first nine months. The wider market is weak. Reuters says the STAR50 index has fallen 40% since July, and that Chinese regulators have been slowing IPOs for humanoid robot companies while they check whether revenue tied to state-backed projects reflects real demand.
What to watch next
Unitree is still one of the few Chinese robot makers that turns a profit, which is why its numbers matter beyond one company. The first thing to watch is Thursday’s trading, the first chance for the market to react. After that, look for whether R&D keeps climbing as a share of revenue in the full-year report, and whether Unitree starts breaking out humanoid unit sales, which would show how much of the growth comes from robots people actually use rather than demos. For the bigger picture on who is building how many robots, see our humanoid robot production tracker.
Frequently asked questions
How much revenue did Unitree make in Q3 2026?
Unitree reported third-quarter revenue of 665 million yuan, about $100 million, up 69.93% from a year earlier. Revenue for the first nine months of 2026 was 1.817 billion yuan, up 55.71%.
Why did Unitree’s profit fall in the third quarter?
Mainly because research spending jumped. Q3 R&D rose 249.58% to 127.04 million yuan, which Unitree says went to embodied-AI large models, computing capacity and its research team. Net profit attributable to shareholders fell 17.4% to 112.7 million yuan.
Did Unitree beat expectations?
On profit, no. Reuters reports that analysts expected 224 million yuan of Q3 net profit, about twice what Unitree delivered. Revenue growth of nearly 70% was strong, but no consensus revenue figure was reported.
Why is nine-month profit up 270%?
Because last year’s figure was low. Unitree says the jump reflects higher gross profit and a large one-time share-based payment expense booked in the prior-year period. Excluding non-recurring items, nine-month net profit fell 18.78% to 349 million yuan.
When did Unitree go public?
Unitree listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s STAR Market on August 19, 2026, under the code 688836. The Q3 report released on October 28 is its first set of results as a listed company.
Sources
- Unitree Robotics, 2026 third-quarter report, Shanghai Stock Exchange filing (October 28, 2026): sse.com.cn
- Reuters, Laurie Chen, “Unitree’s quarterly revenue surges 70% in test for China’s robotics sector” (October 28, 2026): via Yahoo Finance
- South China Morning Post, Vincent Chow, “Unitree reports 70% surge in quarterly revenue, though AI investment weighs on net profit” (October 28, 2026): scmp.com
- National Business Daily (每经网), Unitree’s first quarterly report since listing (October 28, 2026; share price, market value, 2025 revenue mix, pilot-base investment): nbd.com.cn
- CLS via Futu News, Unitree’s first quarterly report since listing (October 28, 2026; quarter-on-quarter change, cash, inventory): futunn.com
- Unitree, “Unitree General-Purpose Humanoid Foundation Model Fully Upgrade Major Open Source” (official YouTube channel, September 10, 2026): youtube.com
- Unitree investor relations page: unitree.com
All sources accessed October 28, 2026, between about 9:40 and 10:45 AM ET. Yuan-to-dollar conversion as reported by Reuters.
Last updated: October 28, 2026. To report an error, see our corrections page. Articles are drafted with AI assistance and reviewed and edited by an editor; see our editorial policy.
