Robotics Investing: Intuitive Surgical or Unitree?

Executive Summary

Comparing Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) with Unitree (STAR Market 688836) calls for one clarification first: the two differ substantially in financial structure, customer base, revenue form and valuation level, and a direct comparison can mislead. This briefing aligns definitions before comparing, and sets out every constructed measure, with its arithmetic, in Appendix A.

At ISRG, instruments and accessories plus services made up 76.4% of second-quarter 2026 revenue, and an installed base of 11,710 da Vinci systems forms an ongoing revenue base; the stock trades at 42.5 times earnings. Unitree's revenue currently comes mainly from unit sales, and its prospectus does not present a consumables or service line tied to the installed base; on the rolling measure constructed here, it trades at roughly 410 times.

The comparison is therefore less about which company is better than about where the uncertainty sits: one is an established business already generating cash but facing changing growth and competition; the other is early in commercialization, with a valuation that reflects expectations well beyond current results.

1. The Two Sets of Numbers

The table compares the two as of August 27, 2026. ISRG's revenue and earnings are the company's own trailing-twelve-month figures; Unitree has not yet filed a half-year report, so its rolling figures are constructed here, as set out in Appendix A1. The two are not strictly comparable, and each is labeled accordingly.

FX at RMB7.14 per US dollar. ISRG figures from its Q2 2026 results and stockanalysis.com; Unitree figures from the audited prospectus, listing announcement and offering documents.

For a sense of scale: ISRG's market cap alone roughly equals the combined value of the 15 Chinese robotics listings selected here plus one more Inovance, and its annual net income roughly equals FANUC, Teradyne, Inovance and Yaskawa combined. The constituent list is the author's selection; Chinese figures are mostly on an FY2025 annual-report basis while Japanese and US figures are trailing twelve months. See Appendix A6.

2. Where the Business Models Diverge

Instruments and accessories plus services made up 76.4% of ISRG's second-quarter 2026 revenue. Instruments carry usage limits and are replaced as procedures occur; service revenue comes from post-installation contracts. On a rough construction that annualizes one quarter over the period-end fleet, each system corresponds to about US$690,000 of annual consumables and service revenue, as set out in Appendix A3. This structure lets the revenue base build with the installed fleet, and is one way to read a 42.5 times multiple on 19% growth.

Unitree recognizes revenue when a unit is delivered. Its prospectus does not present a consumables or service line tied to the installed base, so this briefing does not count one. That is not the same as saying no aftermarket or parts revenue exists, only that current disclosure does not identify it separately. Cost performance is clearly documented: quadruped unit cost fell from RMB22,300 in 2022 to RMB12,100 in January to September 2025, with humanoid gross margin at 62.91% in the same period. On pricing, the G1 starts at RMB85,000 and the R1 Air is listed at RMB29,900.

A third difference lies in where customer funding comes from. A hospital buying a da Vinci can calculate volumes, reimbursement and payback. Of Unitree's humanoid revenue from January to September 2025, research and education customers accounted for 73.60%, consumer for 17.39% and industry applications for 9.01%; within industry applications, RMB15.702M, or 29.29% of that line, is attributable to defined industrial settings. Denominators and periods appear in Appendix A4. The mix indicates that current demand is funded largely by research budgets, a growth path that differs from equipment bought on a return calculation.

3. R&D Spending: A Comparison Easily Misread

R&D spending is often used to assess Unitree's claim of full-stack in-house development. Comparing absolute R&D mainly reflects the difference in scale: ISRG spent US$1,311.8M in FY2025, about RMB9.37B, roughly 5.5 times Unitree's revenue that year. A more comparable view is R&D intensity at similar revenue levels, and how intensity has moved at each company.

ISRG figures from its Q4 2025 release filed with the SEC, its FY2006 results announcement and Macrotrends historical series; Unitree figures from the audited prospectus and listing announcement.

First, at comparable revenue levels the two intensities are not far apart. ISRG ran 7.7% at US$227M of revenue in 2005 and 8.0% at US$373M in 2006. Unitree ran 8.53% in FY2025 and 11.80% in the first half of 2026. The common statement that Unitree spends under a third of the industry average draws on an average that includes loss-making peers with small revenue bases, where intensity is elevated by a small denominator; applying it to a profitable company warrants that caveat.

Second, both companies have seen intensity step up alongside changes in their environment. ISRG held near 8% for years before moving to roughly 14% after 2018, the period when Medtronic and Johnson & Johnson entered surgical robotics. Unitree's R&D rose by RMB82.04M year over year in the first half of 2026, with intensity moving from 6.94% to 11.80%; the company attributed the decline in adjusted profit to a relatively large year-on-year increase in period expenses including R&D and selling expenses. The two series move together; this briefing does not assign a direction of causation.

Third, the composition differs. ISRG's R&D includes clinical trials and multi-country regulatory registration, spending that connects to its approvals and to subsequent instrument and service revenue. Unitree's goes mainly to robot hardware and structure, embodied-AI models and cost reduction. The difference does not show up in the amounts, but it bears on what kind of asset the spending becomes.

For scale: the RMB3.578B, about US$501M, of Unitree's funded-project budget earmarked for R&D-type projects, split across RMB2.022B for embodied-AI models, RMB1.110B for robot hardware and RMB445M for new products and spent over several years, is roughly equivalent to 4.6 months of ISRG's FY2025 R&D.

4. What Each Case Requires to Hold

The case for ISRG:

• Earnings already exist and the valuation does not depend on assumptions about future technology; consumables and services at 76.4% of revenue give the mix relative stability.

• The installed base is still growing, with da Vinci up 12% and Ion up 21%, and procedure volume up about 16% in the second quarter of 2026.

• Switching costs arising from regulatory clearance, clinical evidence and surgeon training are high.

The case for Unitree:

• The company reports 5,511 humanoid units shipped in FY2025, which it describes in its prospectus as the highest shipment volume globally, and two consecutive profitable years. This briefing has not independently verified that ranking.

• Revenue growth is materially higher than ISRG's, at 48.54% in the first half of 2026 against 19% in ISRG's second quarter, in a market whose eventual size is undetermined.

• RMB2.022B of the funded-project budget goes to embodied-AI model development, addressing a capability gap the company itself acknowledges.

   

5. Risks on Both Sides

For ISRG, the current debate is increasingly centered on valuation and the sustainability of growth. Market cap has fallen from US$207.1B at the end of 2025 to US$130.1B, about 37%; over the same period the company reported procedure growth of roughly 16%, below earlier rates. Medtronic's Hugo, Johnson & Johnson's Ottava and China's MicroPort MedBot are entering the market, a variable for long-term share.

For Unitree, the main variables are timing and structure. Founder Wang Xingxing told the World Robot Conference that large-scale deployment into factories and homes remains two to five years away or longer. Adjusted net margin was 21.2% in the first half of 2026, down from 34.8% in FY2025, and only 7.44% of shares were freely traded at listing. The offer price implied a P/E of 219.23 times before non-recurring items on a post-offering share count, or 103.25 times after them, against a 38.56 times one-month average static P/E for the industry.

The performance implied by valuation can be shown by static arithmetic. The first-day opening price of RMB1,100 corresponds to a market cap of RMB444.9B, an opening print rather than a close. Assuming a steady-state net margin of 20%, in line with the 21.2% adjusted margin in the first half of 2026:

Method: required net profit equals RMB444.9B divided by the target P/E; required revenue equals that divided by 20%. Constructed TTM revenue is RMB2.075B. For reference, the company disclosed in review responses that its funded manufacturing base, designed for 75,000 humanoids and 115,000 quadrupeds a year, targets RMB5.7B of annual revenue once fully ramped in year five. This is static arithmetic, not a forecast; see Appendix A5.

6. Metrics Worth Tracking

For ISRG:

• Quarterly procedure growth, about 16% in the second quarter of 2026, and da Vinci 5 as a share of placements, 246 of 468 in that quarter.

• The consumables-and-service share of revenue, and the direction of the per-system annualized figure.

• Competitor clinical progress and placements, particularly outside the United States.

For Unitree:

• The direction of industry applications as a share of humanoid revenue, 9.01% from January to September 2025, and the absolute size of the industrial portion within it.

• Adjusted net margin and R&D intensity, 21.2% and 11.80% respectively in the first half of 2026.

• Whether the first formal half-year and annual reports confirm or adjust the reviewed figures in the listing announcement.

• Construction progress at the funded manufacturing base, with production from year three and full ramp by year five, and the lock-up schedule of six months for 10% of the placement tranche and 12, 24 and 36 months for strategic and pre-IPO holders.

   

7. Conclusion

If the question is narrowed to which is the better robotics company, the answer depends on the yardstick: on realized earnings and the stability of the revenue mix, ISRG leads clearly; on growth and the potential size of its category, Unitree's range of outcomes is wider.

More precisely: ISRG's valuation corresponds mainly to revenue and profit already generated, Unitree's mainly to commercialization that has not yet occurred. The first calls for tracking growth and competition; the second, the pace at which its application mix shifts. Because the sources of uncertainty differ, comparing them on a single multiple invites a misleading conclusion.

One historical reference: ISRG's revenue was US$227.3M in 2005, with a year-end market cap of US$4.24B. Unitree's constructed rolling revenue is about US$291M, against a US$33.5B market cap on August 26. ISRG took roughly twenty years to move from that revenue scale to US$10B. The two operate in different industries, regulatory settings and capital markets; this is offered as a scale reference, not a path forecast.

Appendix A. Definitions and Constructed Measures