The allure of robotics continues to soar!

Recently, Innovusion, a Chinese tech stock listed on U.S. exchanges, has garnered significant attention for its impressive upward momentum, achieving a cumulative increase of over 350% in just three trading days. Notably, on February 14, its share price surged by more than 113%, peaking above $21.

Innovusion's surge is partly fueled by the global revaluation of China's AI assets, spurred by the widespread popularity of DeepSeek, and partly driven by news from the robotics industry.

On February 16, Meta announced plans to make substantial investments in AI-driven humanoid robots. This follows Tesla and NVIDIA, both part of the "American stock market septet," in entering the AI robot race. Although Apple has yet to officially announce its entry, renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has stated that Apple is actively developing both humanoid and non-humanoid robots, currently in the internal concept validation phase.

In China, Unitree Robotics, the company behind the "robot celebrity" at the Spring Festival Gala, recently announced an algorithm upgrade, boasting the ability to "learn any dance."

Innovusion's surge reflects global optimism about the future prospects of the robotics industry and a recognition of China's latest "manufacturing" value. Commercialization of robots is most likely to first take root in the domestic market.

Following NVIDIA, Meta also announces its entry!

As humanoid robots become a common sight in factories, wander the streets, and perform yangko dances at the Spring Festival Gala, the market increasingly believes that 2025 could mark the "first year of mass production" for this nascent industry.

This trend is evident in the movements of industrial capital. Amid the AI wave, since last year, technology giants from home and abroad, including Huawei, CATL, and NVIDIA, have successively announced their foray into the humanoid robot sector. In 2025, Meta joined their ranks.

These companies possess immense strength and significant industrial influence in global software and hardware technology research and development and manufacturing. Their entry largely guarantees the feasibility of the humanoid robot industry in the future.

Meta is reportedly considering developing a consumer-grade household robot designed to assist with tasks such as folding clothes and washing dishes. The company has announced the establishment of a new department within its Reality Labs, focusing on developing software and AI models for humanoid robots. To advance this plan, Meta has hired former Cruise CEO Mark Whitton as Vice President of Robotics Technology.

Meta's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth stated that the company has invested heavily in AI to drive advancements in robotics. He added, "We believe expanding our portfolio in this area will bring value to Meta AI as well as our mixed reality and augmented reality projects."

Moving forward, Meta will develop software, sensors, and AI for humanoid robots and provide these technologies to different companies such as Unitree Robotics and Figure AI for production.

To some extent, the collective actions of these technology giants serve as an industry indicator.

In fact, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also clearly outlined a mass production plan for Optimus: Tesla expects to ship nearly 10,000 humanoid robots in 2025, with shipments anticipated to increase exponentially each year thereafter.

CITIC Securities predicts that global shipments of humanoid robots will exceed 10,000 units in 2025 and reach around 5 million units by 2030, with market demand rising to approximately RMB 750 billion. Another report's data analysis predicts that after 2045, when humanoid robots achieve full intelligence (Lv5), the global market size is expected to exceed RMB 10 trillion.

Currently, humanoid robots have already achieved small-scale commercialization.

Amidst the frenzy before mass production in the robotics industry, Innovusion, a Chinese tech stock, emerges as a new highlight.

In this process, the advantages of China's market and industry are very pronounced.

In terms of product performance, the results are astonishing. During the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the Year of the Snake, robots from Unitree Robotics performed yangko dances, instantly becoming a hot topic. Following their lively and vivid stage performance, Unitree Robotics quickly listed two humanoid robot products on its JD.com official flagship store: Unitree H1 and G1.

The G1 humanoid robot boasts a starting price of only RMB 99,000, making it highly cost-effective. The first batch of sales orders sold out quickly upon launch, demonstrating the market's enthusiastic pursuit of this product.

In terms of technological iteration, domestic technology enterprises are also making continuous and rapid progress. Unitree Robotics recently released a new video captioned "Algorithm upgrade, learn any dance." The video clearly showcases the robot's smooth and natural dance performances, effortlessly handling both simple actions like clapping and twisting the waist and dancing to complex music rhythms.

Meanwhile, researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Shanghai AI Laboratory have released a reinforcement learning framework called "HoST" (Humanoid Stand-up Control). With this framework, humanoid robots can learn to stand up quickly in various poses from scratch in diverse real-world scenarios and terrains, significantly enhancing the robot's adaptability in complex environments.

Industrial policy support is also prominent. As early as October 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guidance on the Innovative Development of Humanoid Robots," actively encouraging the development of humanoid robots. Regions such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Sichuan, Anhui, and others have responded by establishing humanoid robot innovation centers. Recently, the General Office of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee and the General Office of the Guangdong Provincial People's Government issued the "Guangdong Province's Action Plan for Building a Modern Industrial System in 2025" (hereinafter referred to as the "Action Plan"), clearly proposing to accelerate the deployment of strategic emerging industries such as humanoid robots, injecting strong momentum into industrial development.

As robot products gradually move towards mass production, this will have a significant impact on technological innovation and scale effects throughout the industry. Domestic OEMs and all links in the industrial chain are expected to benefit significantly from this.

On the eve of the industry entering the initial stage of mass production, related sectors have also witnessed an active market. Innovusion, a Chinese tech stock, is a typical Chinese robot supply chain company with a significant portion of its business being external, making it stand out in the industry.

After 8 years of growth, Innovusion's IPO surged 3.5 times

Through Tianyancha APP's analysis of the company's shareholding structure, it is known that Innovusion's domestic operating entity is Ewat Robot Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as "Ewat"), established on September 28, 2016. Ewat has been deeply involved in the field of robotic arms for over 8 years.

The company primarily focuses on the research and development, manufacturing, sales, and service of automated robotic arms and injection molding machine-supporting automation equipment products. In 2017, it successfully registered its core brand "Innovusion," dedicated to creating unmanned automated production in plastic product workshops.

In 2020, Ewat, a company from Quanzhou, Fujian, established branches in Vietnam and Jiangsu under the Innovusion brand, balancing domestic and overseas development.

In 2022, its production value successfully exceeded 100 million yuan, and it was honored as an innovative and technology-based small and medium-sized enterprise. At this time, Innovusion was already ranked eighth in the domestic injection molding robotic arm market and had become a strategic partner of industry leaders such as Haier and Konka.

The announcement shows that Innovusion achieved revenues of $6.65 million and $12.61 million in 2022 and 2023, respectively, with corresponding net profits of $540,000 and $1.35 million, demonstrating a promising trend of accelerating revenue and profit growth.

In terms of business composition, nearly 80% of revenue comes from the installation and maintenance services of robotic arms. Innovusion independently develops and produces a large number of injection molding machine-specific robotic arm products, covering horizontal single-axis and dual-axis robotic arms, horizontal and vertical multi-axis robotic arms, and large bullhead multi-axis robotic arms.

The remaining revenue comes from the sale of accessories for injection molding machine-specific robotic arms, such as conveyor belts, welding bases, reducer mounting plates, etc.; the sale of raw materials and scraps for injection molding machine-specific robotic arms; and the provision of installation services to customers who purchase injection molding machine-specific robotic arms from third-party suppliers.

After reaching a certain scale, to accelerate external development, Ewat began to seek a path to list in the United States.

On November 6, 2023, Ewat filed confidentially with the U.S. SEC under the name of its core brand Innovusion, and officially disclosed its prospectus on May 21, 2024. Finally, on January 2 of this year, Innovusion (INLF.US) successfully went public on the Nasdaq through an IPO.

On its first day of trading, Innovusion closed at $4.45 per share, up 11.25% from the issue price, performing moderately. It was only recently that the secondary new stock Innovusion experienced an explosive rally. At 15:12:48 ET on February 14, 2025, Innovusion (INLF.US) triggered the trading halt mechanism. As of now, its total market value is $237 million.

Conclusion

The current DeepSeek thematic market revolves around two primary logics: "benchmarking mental laborers" (cloud services, various ToB software, and the infrastructure that supports these software) and "benchmarking physical laborers" (robots, intelligent driving). This is Tianfeng Securities' interpretation of the recent surges in the two main areas of robots and AI applications.

The bank believes that these two logics correspond to "investment in channel platforms" and "investment in manufacturing," respectively. The former's key is revenue growth, such as the main logic of cloud platforms being that "cheaper AI models will attract more users." The latter's key is cost reduction—the main challenge with the trend of robot advancement may be high costs, far from becoming a household consumer item like a car. Although the final industrialization progress of the two differs, it is undeniable that both will be promising sunrise industries in the future.

Furthermore, Goldman Sachs' latest report points out that DeepSeek R1 and other Chinese AI models have altered the development landscape of China's technology sector with their global competitiveness and cost-effectiveness. With improved growth prospects and potential confidence boosts, the fair value of Chinese stocks is expected to increase by 15%-20%, attracting more than $200 billion in portfolio inflows.

2025 is not only a year when the global AI development story continues to unfold but also a year when China's AI industry further emerges on the global capital stage.