Beijing — According to three individuals familiar with the thoughts of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China’s securities regulatory agency is raising the barriers for humanoid robot startups to go public.

This indicates that as global investors assess whether there is a bubble in artificial intelligence stocks, one of the hottest sectors in the market is cooling down.

The aforementioned individuals stated that Chinese regulatory authorities hope that local “embodied AI” startups seeking to go public meet three specific criteria. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, these individuals requested to remain anonymous.

These three criteria are as follows:

• "Window Guidance" requires humanoid robot applicants to have a sustainable income and commercial orders.
• Losses must be narrowed, and one of the individuals mentioned that three-year forecasts need to be provided.
• Companies must possess core technologies, such as the "brains" of robots or robotic arms.

One of the individuals mentioned that even if startups only need to meet two out of the three requirements, it is currently unclear which companies are capable of doing so.

These individuals claim that this has reduced the market's expectations for these startups to eventually enter the public market to just a few, or possibly none at all.

Two individuals mentioned that in Hong Kong alone, at least a dozen companies related to humanoid robots have submitted applications for listing. Hong Kong began allowing technology companies to submit such applications in a confidential manner in May 2025.

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the China Securities Regulatory Commission did not immediately respond to requests for comments. Chinese mainland companies that wish to list in Hong Kong also need to obtain approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

The Impact of Unitree IPO

In the past few weeks, the market's scrutiny of the growing number of humanoid robotics startups in China and their rapidly rising valuations has intensified. These valuations are supported by both government and private capital.

The representative company in this industry, Yushu Technology ( Unitree ), was granted a regulatory fast-track on August 19 and went public in Shanghai on the occasion of the opening of the Beijing World Robot Conference.

However, in the keynote speech the following day, founder Wang Xingxing reminded that aside from dancing robots, it will still take several years before commercialization becomes a reality. This further intensified the debates in the following weeks about what humanoid robots are actually capable of doing and whether industry startups are truly making money.

China currently has over 100 humanoid robot companies, all of which fall under the category of "embodied AI" promoted by the state. This term has received support from the Beijing government in its annual work reports for two consecutive years, however, authorities have also warned about the existence of a bubble in the humanoid robotics industry.

Industry data provider Xiniu shows that interest has rapidly increased, with investments in this field reaching 47.09 billion yuan (6.95 billion US dollars) in the second quarter, more than doubling from the first quarter and exceeding six times the level of the same period last year.

On August 19th, Unitree raised approximately 6.1 billion yuan (905 million US dollars) in IPO. On the first day of its listing in Shanghai, its stock price soared by over 460% to close at 845 yuan.

As of Monday, the price of the stock had almost halved, at 459.65 yuan.

UbiSelect ( Ubtech ), which is listed in Hong Kong, has also seen a decline of over 40% this year. The company went public in December 2023 and still recorded an operating loss of 279 million yuan in the first half of this year.

The decline in stock prices contrasts with the flood of capital that has poured into humanoid robotics companies over the past approximately 12 months. This technology is often referred to in China as “physical AI”, and is seen as a way for early investors to benefit from the boom in artificial intelligence models.

However, Rhodium Group's analysis this month found that the revenue of a Chinese AI company is only about 10% of that of Anthropic and OpenAI. The report states that the ratio of valuation to revenue – especially for Chinese AI startups such as Moonshot and DeepSeek – is much higher than that of their American competitors.

As market expectations for the US AI giant IPO heat up, chip manufacturer AMD announced on Monday that it will acquire World Labs through a stock transaction worth $8.2 billion. This startup, founded by pioneer Li Feifei of AI, is developing AI models used for creating virtual 3D environments, which are commonly used in the development of humanoid robots.