Wang XingXing isn’t your typical tech star.
“Since childhood, I was filled with self-doubt and anxiety,” the Chinese robotics engineer said during a recent address at Shanghai University. “During a parent-teacher meeting in junior high school, the English teacher said to my parents, ‘This child is a bit stupid.'”
His obsession with machines pushed him far outside his comfort zone and now, against all odds, into the global spotlight.
Wang’s company, Unitree Robotics, is on the verge of becoming a household name as its humanoid and quadrupedal robots grow ubiquitous in the age of embodied artificial intelligence. What began with a few prototypes built with scraps has manifested into massive expansion plans, viral spectacles eliciting both amazement and concern, and soon, robots fighting robots.
Wang showed a strong curiosity and hands-on talent for engineering from a young age. Born in 1990 in Ningbo in the Zhejiang province, he spent his early years building model airplanes and even assembled mini turbo jet engines in middle school.
Though he excelled at science, Wang struggled with English in China’s exam-focused school system. His weak performance in English nearly prevented him from getting into high school and disqualified him from elite universities.
He enrolled at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University in Hangzhou in 2009. Initially described as an introverted and unremarkable student, Wang found his passion in robotics.
During his freshman year, he built a small bipedal walking robot for just ¥200 (or about $30), armed with only basic tools and scavenged parts. The feat gave him confidence and a reputation on campus as an engineer, unafraid of seemingly impossible challenges. Wang became an avid self-learner, immersing himself in technical literature.
After earning his degree in mechatronics engineering, Wang entered Shanghai University for his master’s, focusing on robotics and control systems. His master’s thesis was a brushless DC motor controller.
Crucially, Wang began exploring quadruped robot design during his time in Shanghai. He was convinced that small, electrically actuated four-legged robots would be the future. By 2015, he developed a quadruped prototype called XDog. The quadruped’s performance matched the top academic projects of the era, demonstrating exceptional stability and agility for its cost.
After getting his masters in 2016, Wang initially felt the robotics market was not quite ready for quadrupeds at scale. He sought out industry experience, joining DJI, a world-leading drone manufacturer headquartered in Shenzhen. His tenure was short-lived.
Within months, his XDog went viral in tech media and Wang suddenly had offers. Someone actually wanted to buy his robot and an investor was willing to fund a startup. The 26-year-old jumped at the opportunity, using angel funding of ¥2 million or about $275,000.
Wang launched Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou in August 2016. The name Unitree is a fusion of the words “universe” and “tree” to reflect the founder’s vision of creating a universal technological foundation that branches out across applications. He also considered the name Technology Tree.
In its early years, Unitree focused on refining quadrupedal robot designs. Their first publicly demonstrated product was the Laikago quadruped, named after the Soviet space dog, Laika, in 2017. Subsequent models like AlienGo and the A1 established Unitree’s reputation in the global robotics industry.
By 2020, Unitree attracted high-profile clients NVIDIA and Google. That’s the same year the company became profitable, and its financials have been in the black every year since. Unitree expanded its engineering team and capabilities, developing most core components like actuators and controllers in-house.
The robotics firm’s breakout into the mainstream came in 2021 with its Go1 quadruped. The Go1 was the world’s first consumer-grade robotic dog, priced around $2,700, far cheaper than Western counterparts like Boston Dynamics’ $75,000 robot Spot. A Wall Street Journal piece noted that Unitree’s robot dog could handle surfaces like sand, rocks, and soil with ease.
While Wang has called Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert his idol, he has said he aimed to differentiate Unitree by focusing on making legged robots more accessible and affordable to the general public.
The launch drew global attention, as all of a sudden, hobbyists, tech enthusiasts, and research labs could afford a high-performance quadruped. Unitree also received backing from major venture capital firms around this time.
In February 2021, Unitree’s robots made a cameo at China’s Spring Festival Gala to kick off the Year of the Ox. Unitree’s visibility reached new levels when it demonstrated its technology during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.
That same year, a Unitree quadruped was seen armed in a video from Russia. The company said the modification was unauthorized and denied future sales to the Russian military. Unitree insisted it does not sell to any military forces and is focused on civilian applications.
In another global spectacle, Unitree’s robots danced alongside singer Jason Derulo during the 2023 NFL Superbowl pre-show.
As demand surged, Unitree launched a second-generation quadruped, the Go2, that features a 4D ultra-wide-angle LiDAR sensor that improves its perception by 200 percent.
The company introduced an industrial-grade robotic dog, the B2, in late 2023. As Unitree accounted for up to 70 percent of global quadruped robot shipments, the company ventured into humanoid robots.
Unitree developed its first bipedal prototype, the H1, in mid 2023, as the global humanoid robotics market was on the verge of exploding. The H1 humanoid surprised observers by setting a world-record running speed of 3.3 /ms.
By early 2024, the humanoid robot became the first full-sized electric biped to perform a standing backflip. Unitree disrupted the emerging industry in May of that year, introducing its G1, a scaled down version of its flagship humanoid. The G1 stands about 127 centimeters tall and weighs just 35 kg. It has 23 to 43 joint motors depending on the configuration.
In August 2024, Unitree unveiled its mass production-ready iteration of the robot, starting around $16,000 per unit. The company’s rapid progress in humanoids coincided with China’s national push to mass produce humanoids in 2025 and corner the market by 2027.
As Unitree’s product lineup broadened, the company started hiring aggressively, with nearly 500 employees by early 2025.
In the 2025 Chinese New Year festivities, Unitree’s H1 humanoid robots stole the show during China’s Spring Festival Gala. A troupe of the robotic humanoids performed a synchronized folk dance alongside professional dancers. The spectacle was viewed by hundreds of millions of people.
Unitree followed that with a shock and awe campaign demonstrating the shorter humanoid’s rapidly improving capabilities unlocked with reinforcement learning. In viral videos, Unitree G1 robots demonstrated their human-like dancing and martial arts skills.
Using NVIDIA’s technology, Unitree trains its robots in a simulated environment. Digital twins of the robots learn movements through trial and error. The learned behaviors are then transferred to the physical robot via a process called Sim2Real, short for simulation to reality.
In April, Unitree launched its new 10,000 square meter factory in Hangzhou to ramp up output for the coming years. Unitree’s new factory is roughly the size of 1.5 football fields. The Hangzhou municipal government actively supported Unitree establishing the plant.
The company’s production and supply chain are tightly integrated around Hangzhou, giving it logistical advantages. Unitree is also establishing branch offices in Shanghai and Beijing.
The company set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Shenzhen, the heart of China’s hardware and tech manufacturing ecosystem and has invested in at least five startups related to intelligent robots.
At Unitree, Wang reportedly serves as CEO and also effectively as chief technology officer, overseeing nearly every aspect of R&D and operations. He’s described as extremely hands-on, personally interviewing new hires, working long hours alongside engineers, and staying on the frontlines of product development.
Now in his mid-30s, Wang has been lauded as a “post-90s robotics genius” in Chinese media. In February 2025, he was the only entrepreneur of his generation invited to a high-profile symposium of business leaders chaired by President Xi Jinping. He was seated prominently in the front row, near tech luminaries like Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei.
In interviews, Wang has predicted that humanoid robots will revolutionize nearly every industry within his lifetime. His company insists it will not expand production blindly, but will ramp up output methodically as orders grow.