10 years ago Wang Xingxing was a Shanghai University grad student building a $3,000 quadruped robot for his thesis. Today, the 36 year old founder is China's first humanoid robotics billionaire. Unitree closed day-2 of trading at 687 yuan, about a $40B market cap. Xingxing's stake: ~30% direct + indirect (via employee equity platform) Net worth: ~$12B USD XDog, a low-cost electric-motor quadruped he built as a grad student in 2015, went viral internationally. He quit his DJI job after 2 months, took ~$275K in angel funding, and founded Unitree in Hangzhou in Aug 2016 at age 26. His architectural bet: electric motors instead of Boston Dynamics-style hydraulics to make humanoids affordable, and selling them as hardware platforms instead of waiting for a finished product. 10 years, $275K angel round -> $12B net worth, and built a company primed to be a dominant force in a new technology paradigm.