4000亿市值的宇树，和1元/股上车的「千万富翁」打工人

Original author: David, Deep Wave TechFlow

On August 19, Unitree Robotics landed on the STAR Market.

Shares surged 629% at the open to 1,100 yuan, with the market cap briefly hitting 444.9 billion yuan. Retail investors who won one lot saw paper gains of 470,000 yuan.

The internet is buzzing over the wealth-creation effect following the listing — from founder Wang Xingxing's 133.5 billion yuan net worth and the new title of richest post-90s billionaire, to Lei Jun's Shunwei Capital booking 15.2 billion yuan in paper gains from its earlier investment. The largest external shareholder, the Meituan group, has gained over 33.3 billion yuan on paper. Even Liang Wenfeng's DeepSeek and High-Flyer scored 1.1 billion yuan from the IPO subscription.

The big shots count their money, retail investors get a slice — a lively feast of wealth.

Only these numbers have little to do with the vast majority of working people.

While the spotlight shines on the bell-ringing Wang Xingxing and the VCs who invested, the story that truly comes closest to the ceiling of wealth creation for ordinary employees is hidden inside a company called "Shanghai Yuyi" in Unitree's prospectus.

This company's name doesn't carry the "Unitree" brand, but it is Unitree's employee equity incentive platform, holding 10.94% of Unitree Robotics' shares. The batch of options priced at 1 yuan/share signed with employees back in 2017, when Unitree couldn't pay salaries, are held within it.

And today, among the holders of these options, the highest net worth based on current prices has reached 1.58 billion yuan.

Yuyi and the Wings Beneath It

Tracing back through the prospectus, Shanghai Yuyi is a limited partnership. Employees don't directly hold Unitree shares — they hold interests in this partnership, through which they indirectly own equity.

The partner list nests several layers of equity platforms along with dozens of natural-person employees. And at the very front of that list are three post-90s individuals.

Yang Zhiyu, head of mechanical structures, born 1991, majored in Mechanical Engineering and Automation at Zhejiang University. He joined right after the company was founded in 2016, holding approximately 1.7837 million shares indirectly. Based on Unitree's first-day peak price, his paper net worth is 1.58 billion yuan.

Chen Li, head of sales and service, born 1990, holds approximately 946,400 shares, worth 840 million yuan.

Zhang Yangguang, head of algorithms and software, born 1993, majored in Automation at Nankai University. The robotic yangge dance routine "Yang BOT" that went viral nationwide during the 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala — the feature that generates motion programs directly from video — was developed under his lead. He holds approximately 546,000 shares, worth 480 million yuan.

But beyond these three, where are the equity incentives for the broader employee base mentioned earlier?

Shanghai Yuyi has only six direct partners in total: Wang Xingxing, Chen Li, Yang Zhiyu, one executive partner, and two partnerships — Hangzhou Yixin and Hangzhou Yiyi.

The vast majority of employees' names don't make it onto this layer of the list. Because limited partnerships allow a maximum of only 50 partners, Unitree stacked two additional equity "share containers" — Yixin and Yiyi — above it, forming a three-tier structure of "Shanghai Yuyi → Yixin/Yiyi → Employees."

So, the incentives aimed at ordinary employees are all housed in these two second-tier platforms. And it's only when you flip to this layer of the list that you find where the rank-and-file workers are concentrated.

More than 60 front-line R&D technical managers and core technical staff receive shares ranging from 0.01% to 0.05% through these platforms. Based on the first-day closing market cap of 358 billion yuan, these individuals' paper net worth ranges from 35 million to 170 million yuan.

The Equity Plan Signed When Salaries Couldn't Be Paid

Back in 2017, Unitree's second year of existence, the funding had run out and salaries couldn't be paid.

Tian Jiangchuan of Initial Capital met Wang Xingxing in November of that year. They talked for a long time, but he didn't invest, jotting down four words in his internal investment notes: humble grassroots background.

Three years later, Initial Capital re-entered at a 4x valuation. Tian later attributed his initial misjudgment to his own "elitist arrogance."

In those early days without capital injection, Wang Xingxing's decision was to suspend his own salary and pay employees out of his own pocket.

In September of that year, the company signed its first batch of option agreements with 17 first-generation core employees including Yang Zhiyu, at an exercise price of 1 yuan per unit of registered capital. Over the following years, the company conducted multiple rounds of equity incentives, all of which were eventually consolidated into the Shanghai Yuyi platform for management.

The three post-90s individuals at the front of the list, and the dense crowd of over 100 names behind them — that's how they each came in.

Today, based on the issue price of 150.80 yuan, these options have gained more than 150x on paper. Based on the first-day opening price of 1,100 yuan, the gain exceeds 1,000x. And earlier, Li Yannan of Sequoia China noted another fact: Wang Xingxing's current core executive team is the same group of people from when the company was first founded — not a single person has left.

This story of bitterness turning to sweetness also has a broader version in the IPO's strategic placement.

Unitree established two employee special asset management plans, with a total of 171 executives and core employees participating, subscribing for a combined 272 million yuan. Plan No. 1 covers 161 people, mostly front-line R&D engineers, with subscriptions ranging from 1 million to 4 million yuan each.

Plan No. 2 has only 10 people, with a 36-month lock-up period. Wang Xingxing himself subscribed for 15 million yuan, the largest contribution. Zhang Yangguang, Yang Zhiyu, and another R&D leader, Wu Jinze, each contributed 9 million yuan.

As of the end of 2025, Unitree had 516 employees in total. One out of every three employees has bet on their own company in this listing.

Ordinary People Who Boarded the Right Ship

After the listing, the story of Shanghai Yuyi isn't over yet.

Wang Xingxing's upper-level partnership interests in Shanghai Yuyi will all be used for future employee equity incentives, with the incentive recipients excluding himself. Within the two calendar years following the 36-month anniversary of the listing, no less than 50% of these interests must be granted.

One detail about the affiliated companies set up for employee incentives that I haven't mentioned: 99.68% of Hangzhou Yixin's shares are currently held by Wang Xingxing and haven't been distributed to others. This almost-empty container is essentially reserved for incentivizing those who come later.

The employee incentive roster will predictably grow longer — but the wealth on that roster won't be realized anytime soon.

Shanghai Yuyi's platform shares are locked for 36 months, and future grants are tied to annual performance reviews. If performance targets aren't met, the corresponding incentive shares may not unlock. Before the prospectus signing date, 9 employees who had received grants had already left the company, and their incentive shares were cancelled.

The 272 million yuan subscribed in the strategic placement is also locked — Plan No. 1 for 12 months, Plan No. 2 for 36 months. If the stock price falls below the issue price during the lock-up period, that money becomes unrealized losses.

And what price the market is willing to pay for Unitree in the first half-year, one year, or three years after listing — no one can guarantee. So when to take profits, whether one can hold until then, and through what means and actions — that will be another game between employees and the company.

But even if those rewards never convert into cash, boarding the right ship is still better than not boarding at all.

In that autumn of 2017 when salaries couldn't be paid, some young people chose to stay, tying themselves to the company at 1 yuan per share — and waited for their 150x.

Amid China's hard-tech dividend and the overarching theme of Sino-American tech competition, stories like this should have another batch coming. For ordinary people, that's the best part of the listing bell.