Unitree Robotics’ Shanghai debut delivered a bigger surprise than crypto traders had anticipated, with the robot maker opening far above both its IPO price and the valuation implied by a Hyperliquid perpetual contract.
Before the listing, crypto traders had priced Unitree at more than four times its official IPO valuation. Even that aggressive estimate proved too conservative once the company’s shares began trading.
Unitree, a Hangzhou-based producer of humanoid and quadruped robots, opened Wednesday at 1,100 yuan ($163.12), soaring 629% from its IPO price of 150.8 yuan. The opening price valued the company at approximately 445 billion yuan ($66 billion).
The synthetic Unitree market on Hyperliquid had traded between $92 and $94 the previous week, implying a valuation of roughly $38 billion, according to Allium.
Unitree’s actual opening valuation was therefore about 75% higher than the level established in the crypto market before the Shanghai exchange opened.
Hyperliquid Traders Bet on Unitree’s Debut
The Unitree contract on Hyperliquid is a perpetual futures product that allows traders to speculate on the company’s share price without owning its stock.
The contract was launched by third-party developer xyz.trade using Hyperliquid’s infrastructure and operates continuously. It effectively gave traders an avenue to express their expectations for Unitree’s IPO before traditional stock-market trading began.
The difference between the two valuations was substantial. Unitree’s IPO placed its value at about $9 billion, while the perpetual contract indicated a figure closer to $38 billion.
Once Unitree shares began trading, the crypto contract climbed further. UNITREE-USDC reached about $121 Wednesday morning, up roughly 20% over 24 hours, after briefly moving above $140.
The market recorded around $64 million in trading volume, while open interest stood at approximately $29 million.
SpaceX Set a Higher Bar for Crypto Price Discovery
Unitree is the second major example this summer of crypto traders attempting to establish a price for a company before its traditional stock-market debut.
SpaceX provided the first notable test. Ahead of its June listing, perpetual futures priced the company’s stock at approximately $170 per share.
SpaceX subsequently traded above $176 during its first session before closing at $161, almost matching the level predicted by the crypto market for initial trading.
However, the SpaceX market had substantially more liquidity. Its Hyperliquid contract recorded roughly $216 million in open interest immediately before the IPO, while 24-hour trading volume exceeded $150 million.
Unitree’s approximately $29 million in open interest represents a much smaller amount of capital supporting its pre-IPO valuation.
Leverage Makes Unitree Trading Riskier
The Unitree contract also highlights the risks of using leveraged perpetual futures to speculate on traditional equities.
The instrument offers leverage of up to 10 times, allowing relatively small price movements to trigger liquidations and force traders out of positions.
The risks became particularly visible after the stock began trading. Funding rates for Unitree were around negative 0.13%, meaning traders betting on lower prices were paying those holding bullish positions to keep their trades open.
The SpaceX and Unitree examples offer contrasting lessons about crypto-based price discovery. SpaceX showed that a crypto perpetual can come remarkably close to an IPO’s opening-market price.
Unitree demonstrated the opposite: crypto traders correctly recognized that the IPO appeared significantly undervalued, but the traditional market ultimately set an opening price far above even the crypto market’s bullish expectations.
