Crypto traders are betting big on Unitree. Pre-IPO perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid priced the robotics company at roughly $38 billion on Friday. That is four times its $9 billion IPO valuation.
The contracts changed hands between $92 and $94, CoinDesk reported, citing blockchain analytics firm Allium. Unitree’s IPO price sits at 150.80 yuan ($22.37) per share. Bybit launched its own pre-IPO perpetual on Aug. 14. Shares are expected to begin trading on Shanghai’s STAR Market between Aug. 17 and 21.
Two Hyperliquid markets, operated by Trade.xyz and Paragon, accumulated $9.1 million in open interest and about $59 million in turnover, Allium said. When both were active, the contracts traded 1.6% apart on average. Near $92 and $94. A premium of more than 300% to the IPO price.
Trade.xyz’s order book was almost evenly split. $6.5 million long against $6.6 million short. Smaller positions told a different story: those below $50,000 were 70% short by value. Traders remain divided.
Allium’s analysts did not mince words about the setup. “Unitree can open at twice its IPO price and still liquidate a third of long exposure,” the firm wrote in its report. “Any open away from today’s price forces one side of this market out.”
The numbers bear that out. An open at $45, roughly twice the IPO price, would liquidate about 33% of longs, Allium calculated. At $128, near six times the IPO price, about 53% of shorts get wiped out.
The valuation gap is hard to ignore. Hyperliquid implies $38 billion. Unitree’s offering price says $9 billion. The IPO was reportedly 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail traders, per Reuters.
Unitree was founded in Hangzhou in 2016. It makes four-legged and humanoid robots for research, industrial, and consumer use. Revenue hit $253 million last year, up 335%. Humanoid robot shipments topped 5,500, according to Allium.
Bybit sees this as part of a larger play. The exchange’s “TradFi perps” lineup now spans more than 200 products: equities, ETFs, commodities, indices, and private companies, Cointelegraph reported. Bybit also listed Chinese AI startup Moonhop AI alongside Unitree. Cointelegraph’s page names the company “Moonhop AI,” while earlier feed summaries used “Moonshot AI.”
These pre-IPO perps do not confer ownership. Positions cannot be converted into shares. They are synthetic bets on where a private company’s valuation lands before its stock trades publicly.
Hyperliquid has run this playbook before. In June, traders on the platform correctly anticipated that SpaceX would debut above its $135 IPO price. A pre-IPO contract tracking Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT came within 2.5% of its Shanghai opening price at the bell in July, per Allium. The platform has since pushed beyond crypto into commodities, including oil and gold, and private companies.
