Crypto Exchanges Race to Launch Unitree Pre-IPO Perpetuals as Traders Bet on 4x Valuation Gap

Hyperliquid traders are pricing robot maker Unitree at roughly $38 billion ahead of its Shanghai listing. That is a premium of more than 300% over the $9 billion IPO price. Crypto derivatives venues are rushing to offer pre-IPO perpetual contracts on the stock. Bybit listed its own Unitree perp the same week, adding to a tradfi lineup that has swelled past 200 products since April. The moves push crypto venues deeper into pre-IPO equity speculation, a category where synthetic margin meets a security that has not yet traded.

Unitree priced its Shanghai STAR Market IPO at 150.80 yuan ($22.37) per share, valuing the Hangzhou-based robotics firm at about $9 billion, CoinDesk reported. China’s securities regulator approved the offering in July. Retail subscriptions reportedly hit 8,000 times the shares on offer, according to Reuters, with trading expected to begin between Aug. 17 and Aug. 21.

On Hyperliquid, two markets, Trade.xyz and Paragon, carried the pre-IPO perpetual at $92 to $94 on Friday, per a report by Allium analysts cited by CoinDesk. The implied valuation sits near $38 billion. That is close to four times the IPO price. Combined open interest across the two contracts was $9.1 million on roughly $59 million in turnover. When both were active, the contracts traded 1.6% apart on average.

Positioning splits down the middle on Trade.xyz, the larger of the two: $6.5 million long against $6.6 million short. Smaller accounts lean bearish. Bets below $50,000 ran 70% short by value, Allium found. Traders, as ever, disagree.

Bybit, the Dubai-based exchange, added Unitree alongside AI startup Moonshot AI to its pre-IPO perpetuals slate, Cointelegraph reported. The contracts are USDT-denominated and settled. Traders get price exposure without ownership of the underlying shares. Bybit’s tradfi perpetuals lineup has grown to more than 200 products since launching in April, spanning equities, ETFs, commodities, indices and pre-IPO companies.

Neither platform’s contract converts into shares. Pre-IPO perps are synthetic. They create a margined speculation market on a price that does not yet exist publicly.

Unitree, founded in Hangzhou in 2016, makes four-legged and humanoid robots. Revenue reached $253 million last year, up 335%, with humanoid robot shipments topping 5,500, according to the Allium report. The fundamentals underpin a real company. They do not explain a $38 billion implied valuation against a $9 billion IPO price.

That gap leaves margined bettors exposed to sharp repricing the moment real trading begins. Allium modeled the liquidation surface. If Unitree shares open at $45, twice the IPO price and still 52% below the current perp level, roughly a third of long exposure gets liquidated. A $128 open, about six times the IPO price, would wipe out 53% of short positions. “Any open away from today’s price forces one side of this market out,” Allium wrote in its report.

The precedent is mixed. A CXMT pre-IPO contract on Hyperliquid came within 2.5% of the Shanghai opening price at the bell in July. Hyperliquid traders also correctly anticipated that SpaceX would debut above its $135 IPO price in June. Neither case involved a 4x premium.

The broader tokenized-stocks sector is growing fast. Tokenized stocks carry $2.38 billion in distributed value across 1.31 million holders, with holder counts up 123.62% over the past 30 days, according to RWA.xyz data cited by Cointelegraph. Binance, Coinbase and Kraken have all rolled out SpaceX-linked contracts this year.

What is not known: the exact date Unitree shares begin trading on the STAR Market, how the Hyperliquid perp price will converge or gap at the open, and whether other crypto venues beyond Hyperliquid and Bybit will list Unitree contracts before the bell.