According to a report by Shanghai Securities News on August 18, Unitree Technology founder Wang Xingxing discussed his departure from DJI in an interview.
Public information shows that Wang Xingxing majored in mechatronics at the School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, then pursued graduate studies in mechanical engineering at Shanghai University. In June 2016, after graduating, Wang joined DJI, but left just two months later in August. After securing angel financing, he founded Unitree Technology.
Wang Xingxing said in the interview: “I have loved technology since I was a child, and I have also always loved robots. When I was a freshman in 2009, I built my first bipedal humanoid robot. In 2016, I had already built a robot while I was at school. Just then, external investors and customers were willing to buy it, so I quit my job and started a business.”
Wang Xingxing also said: “I made this choice out of my passion for the robotics industry, combined with the fact that an opportunity for industrialization had emerged. At that time, this field was still very niche and did not attract much attention, but I had already seen the direction and trends of technological development. I had even anticipated some of the situations our company would face as it developed.”
Regarding the “price butcher” label applied to Unitree Technology by the public, Wang Xingxing responded: “Actually, I don’t think we have reached the level of a ‘butcher.’ Our gross margins are reasonable overall. Our strategy has always been to keep the company healthy and maintain steady cash flow, so we keep our gross margin at a reasonable level. This gives us greater confidence in generating our own cash flow. I also believe that every genuinely well-developed industry needs reasonable profits to promote healthy growth—not just our company, but the industry as a whole.”
The Shanghai University Alumni Association published a profile of Wang Xingxing in January 2024, noting that during his graduate studies at Shanghai University, he happened to be invited to participate in a quadruped robot project. Inspired by this experience, Wang independently designed and developed his first product, XDog, based on publicly available foreign literature. It was the world’s first small, high-performance, low-cost quadruped robot driven by external-rotor brushless motors.
In 2015, while in his second year of graduate school, Wang Xingxing entered the International Intelligent “Star Creator” Competition with his XDog and won second prize, along with a prize of 80,000 yuan. This became the first significant sum of money Wang earned in his life.
After actually developing XDog, Wang Xingxing began considering commercializing quadruped robots. He posted XDog’s test video online, hoping to generate some interest in the robotics community. However, investors did not appear to be convinced, and Wang’s entrepreneurial plan was temporarily put on hold.
In June 2016, Wang Xingxing graduated with a master’s degree from Shanghai University. Not long after he joined DJI, XDog’s test video suddenly “went viral,” receiving coverage from media outlets in China and abroad, and investors began contacting him frequently. Although this opportunity came a year later than expected, Wang did not hesitate to seize it. In August of the same year, he left DJI and, after obtaining angel financing, founded what is now known as “Unitree Technology.”
