Tesla's Golden Optimus Debuts; Unitree Eyes Q4 IPO; UBTECH Secures 250M RMB Humanoid Robot Contract | Wave Weekly

1. Tesla Unveils Golden Optimus for the First Time

On September 4, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff posted a 50-second video on X (formerly Twitter) interacting with Optimus. In the video, Benioff asked Optimus to fetch a Coke, but Optimus did not act immediately. Musk commented that they need to give it some space. After allowing Optimus room to maneuver, the robot began to walk forward.

This Optimus differs from previous second-generation models; its golden color scheme immediately drew global attention. The hand design of the golden Optimus resembles human hands more closely, although some netizens pointed out that these may be dummy hands without functional capabilities.

The distinct golden appearance and structural differences have led many to speculate that this is Tesla’s third-generation Optimus robot, as Musk had previously hinted in June about the upcoming release of Optimus V3.

However, Musk responded to user Niccruzpatane, stating: 'We haven’t shown Optimus V3 yet. The last two images were of V2 and V2.5.'

2. Unitree Expected to IPO in Q4

On September 2, Unitree Robotics posted on X that it expects to submit an IPO application to Chinese stock exchanges between October and December. In terms of its capitalization process, Unitree had already completed a name change in May this year, changing from "Hangzhou Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd." to "Hangzhou Unitree Robotics Co., Ltd." (incorporated). Subsequently, in June, Unitree completed its Series C financing round, with a valuation exceeding 10 billion yuan. Later, in July, information on the official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission indicated that Unitree had filed for IPO tutoring with the Zhejiang Bureau of the CSRC, with CITIC Securities as the tutoring institution.

In terms of revenue, Unitree's revenue exceeded 1 billion yuan in 2024. Simultaneously, in Unitree's product revenue structure for 2024, quadruped robots accounted for the largest share at 65%; followed by humanoid robots at 30%; and finally component products at 5%. Regarding product destinations, approximately 80% of quadruped robots are used in research, education, and consumer sectors, while 20% are used in industrial fields. Humanoid robots, however, are 100% used in research, education, and consumer sectors.

3. UBTECH Wins 250 Million Yuan Humanoid Robot Contract

On September 3, UBTECH announced it had secured a procurement contract worth 250 million yuan for embodied AI humanoid robot products and solutions from an enterprise. The contract primarily features the humanoid robot Walker S2 (equipped with an autonomous hot-swappable battery system), and UBTECH will initiate delivery within this year.

According to public data statistics, to date, UBTECH's Walker series humanoid robots have secured nearly 400 million yuan in contracts (including H1 orders for humanoid robots worth nearly 50 million yuan that have been delivered). Notably, in July earlier this year, UBTECH Technology had just won a bid for a 90.5115 million yuan robot equipment procurement project from MiYi (Shanghai) Automotive Technology Co., Ltd.

At the product level, UBTECH released its next-generation humanoid robot Walker S2 in July this year. Featuring autonomous battery-swapping technology, it supports 7x24-hour uninterrupted operation, and its industrial humanoid robot Walker S series has entered factory training programs at numerous facilities globally.

4. Zhifang Square Completes New Round of Series A Financing

On September 1, Zhifang Square announced the completion of a new round of Series A financing led by Shenzhen Capital Group (SCGC). Existing investors Duhong Asset Management and SDIC Chuanying continued to increase their stakes, while Huadi Biological Technology and a large retail enterprise participated as industrial capital. The funds raised will be used for the continuous iteration of the GOVLA large model and AlphaBot series robots, expansion of self-built production lines, and global market development.

At the technology level, in April this year, Zhifang Square released the全域 (full-domain) body VLA large model—GOVLA. Unlike traditional VLA models that can only control robotic arms, GOVLA possesses full-body and trajectory collaborative control capabilities. It also introduces a "fast-slow system fusion" architecture, achieving an end-to-end breakthrough in perception, reasoning, and control.

In the following two months, Zhifang Square, in collaboration with Peking University and other institutions, released the open-source version of FiS-VLA. In third-party evaluations, FiS-VLA's comprehensive performance surpassed the international benchmark π0 by 30%. At the product level, Zhifang Square has currently launched three wheeled, lift-able humanoid robots: Alpha Bot, Alpha Bot 1S, and AlphaBot 2.