The stock hasn't even started trading yet, and its price has already split into two competing versions.
Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics priced its IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market at RMB 150.80 per share (roughly $22.37), valuing the company at about $9 billion. Meanwhile, pre-IPO perpetual contracts trading on Hyperliquid were quoted between $92 and $94 on Friday—implying a valuation approaching $38 billion, more than four times the IPO price. The gap was flagged in a report from blockchain analytics firm Allium.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Hangzhou, Unitree focuses on quadruped and humanoid robots, serving customers across research, industrial, and consumer markets. According to Allium's figures, the company posted $253 million in revenue last year, up 335% year-over-year, with humanoid robot shipments topping 5,500 units. The IPO itself has drawn extreme demand, with retail oversubscription reportedly hitting 8,000x. Shares are expected to officially begin trading between August 17 and 21.
Hyperliquid started out as an on-chain trading platform for crypto perpetual contracts, letting traders go long or short without actually holding the underlying asset. That mechanism later expanded into commodities like oil and gold, and now it's being applied to companies that haven't even gone public yet—pre-IPO perpetuals don't represent equity and can't be converted into real shares. They simply let people bet on where a company's stock price will land before it officially lists.
This isn't the first time the mechanism has been put to the test. Allium's analysis notes that pre-IPO contracts tracking Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT came within 2.5% of its actual listing price in July. Back in June, Hyperliquid traders also correctly bet that Elon Musk's SpaceX (ticker SPCX) would list above its $135 IPO price.
A 4x Premium Means Almost Anyone Could Get Liquidated
Unitree's pre-IPO contracts currently trade on two Hyperliquid venues, Trade.xyz and Paragon, with combined open interest of $9.1 million and cumulative volume of about $59 million. Quotes across the two markets differ by just 1.6% on average, with the latest prices sitting around $92 to $94—more than 300% above the IPO price.
The problem is that even if Unitree opens at twice its IPO price, longs could still take a massive hit. As Allium puts it bluntly in the report: "Unitree could open at 2x its IPO price and still trigger liquidations for a third of long positions." Here's the math: if the opening price lands around $45 (roughly 2x the IPO price), it would still be about 52% below the current perpetual contract price—enough to trigger liquidations on an estimated 33% of long positions. On the flip side, if the opening price jumps to $128 (about 6x the IPO price), it could wipe out 53% of short positions. Only if the actual opening price lands close to the current perpetual quote would both sides come out unscathed.
On Trade.xyz, the larger of the two markets, long and short positions are actually fairly balanced—$6.6 million in longs versus $6.5 million in shorts, roughly evenly matched. But breaking down the positions reveals a divide: among positions under $50,000, 70% are betting short. Allium's conclusion is straightforward: "Whichever way the opening price deviates from current levels, one side is going to get forced out."
