Later I connect with Wang Xingxing, Unitree’s CEO, who, citing his poor English, agreed to talk via the messaging app WeChat. Wang is something of a celebrity in China. In February 2025, he was invited to an event hosted by the Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, along with several members of China’s tech royalty (Alibaba’s Jack Ma; Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei; BYD’s chairman and CEO, Wang Chuanfu; and the CEO of Xiaomi, Lei Jun). At the conference in Shanghai, I’d seen Wang deliver a keynote speech in rapid-fire Mandarin. He told the crowd that he planned to build robots adept at “serving tea, working in factories, or even performing arts.”
On WeChat, he tells me that he’s been fascinated by robots since he was a kid. During his first year at university, he cobbled together a small, two-legged robot on a budget of 200 RMB ($28). “The moment I saw the robot I designed come to life,” Wang writes, “the sense of achievement from combining technology and creativity made me determined to devote myself to robotics research.”
As a master’s student at Shanghai University in 2015, he built a small, four-legged robot for less than 20,000 RMB (about $2,800). It became a social media hit; people marveled that a student could build such a sure-footed, low-cost machine. He worked briefly for the drone company DJI before receiving a small amount of seed funding and establishing Unitree in 2016. The company released its first product, a robot dog called Laikago, in 2017.
Wang admits that, early on, Boston Dynamics and its fourlegged robot Spot were an inspiration. Gavin Kenneally, CEO of Ghost Robotics, recalls seeing Laikago at trade shows and conferences. “Their robot really wasn’t very capable,” he tells me. But while Spot sold for $75,000, Laikago cost only $25,000.
In 2019, a team at MIT developed an electric motor that would allow its quadruped, Mini Cheetah, to run at record speeds. Less than a year later, Unitree unveiled a new fourlegged robot, A-1. “It was basically an exact copy of the MIT Mini Cheetah,” Kenneally says. “It was leaps and bounds ahead of their previous platform.”
Unitree’s business took off. In 2023 its sales of quadrupeds were 10 times higher than Boston Dynamics’, according to the consulting firm SemiAnalysis. Nearly 24,000 Unitree quadrupeds were sold for use, among other places, on construction sites and oil rigs and in factories. The robots can climb stairs and traverse rubble to conduct inspections or security patrols.