Unitree IPO Opens 629% Higher, Beating Hyperliquid Perp Bets by 75%

Unitree Robotics, the Hangzhou-based humanoid robot maker, opened for trading in Shanghai at 1,100 yuan a share on Wednesday, a 629% jump from its 150.8 yuan IPO offer price. Even after the stock pared its gains to close near 968.1 yuan, the debut still landed roughly 75% above the valuation crypto derivatives traders had priced into a pre-IPO perpetual future on Hyperliquid before the official listing.

The company raised about 6.1 billion yuan, or roughly $905 million, in the offering. That makes the gap between the on-chain perp price and the real-world opening print one of the largest public mispricings yet recorded for a crypto-traded pre-IPO bet.

How the numbers stacked up

Ahead of the Shanghai listing, Hyperliquid traders had bid Unitree’s implied valuation well above its official IPO price, correctly anticipating strong demand. But their pricing still undershot the market by a wide margin: the stock’s actual opening price outran the crypto-implied figure by around 75%, and its settled first-day price of 968.1 yuan remained more than 500% above the 150.8 yuan offer price.

In other words, crypto derivatives traders got the direction right — a large premium over the IPO price — but badly underestimated the magnitude of demand once Unitree shares actually began trading on a regulated exchange.

Why pre-IPO perps matter to crypto traders

Hyperliquid and similar on-chain derivatives venues have increasingly listed perpetual futures tied to the expected valuations of high-profile, not-yet-listed companies, letting crypto-native traders speculate on traditional IPOs before shares are available on any stock exchange. Unitree, a well-known name in China’s humanoid-robotics push, was a natural candidate given retail enthusiasm for the sector.

The episode is a live case study in how far on-chain price discovery can drift from real-world market outcomes when the underlying asset only becomes tradeable through an entirely separate, regulated venue. For traders using these instruments to hedge or speculate on upcoming listings, Wednesday’s gap is a reminder that perp markets built on limited information and thin liquidity can badly misjudge demand — in either direction.

What it means for the next listing

For now, Unitree’s stock has settled well above its offer price but below its opening spike, and the Hyperliquid perp has been overtaken by the actual listing. The bigger takeaway for crypto markets is structural: as more platforms offer synthetic exposure to pre-IPO valuations, the gap between crypto-derived prices and eventual public listings will be watched closely as a gauge of how reliable — or unreliable — these on-chain bets really are.

Sources

• coindesk.com
• beincrypto.com