Summary
Wang Xingxing is a Chinese roboticist and entrepreneur who founded Unitree Robotics in Hangzhou in 2016 and serves as its CEO and CTO, building the company from a single-person operation into one of China’s leading quadruped and humanoid robot makers.
Career
Wang was born in 1990 in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. In 2009, he enrolled at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University to study mechatronics engineering, and as a first-year student built his first small bipedal robot using roughly ¥200 (about $30) of hand-crafted parts (Wang Xingxing — Wikipedia).
In 2013, Wang enrolled at Shanghai University for a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. During his graduate studies, he spent about 20,000 yuan independently developing XDog, a high-performance quadruped robot prototype driven by low-cost brushless motors, which he built for his graduation thesis and which won an award at a Shanghai robot design competition, drawing significant online attention (Wang Xingxing — Wikipedia; Observer).
After graduating in 2016, Wang briefly joined drone maker DJI but resigned after about two months to start his own company. He founded Unitree Robotics in a 50-square-meter office in Hangzhou’s Binjiang District on August 26, 2016, launching with prize money from a robotics competition and roughly $300,000 in angel funding from Yin Fangming, co-president of educational robotics firm Roobo, who had taken notice after XDog went viral (Unitree Robotics — Wikipedia; Observer).
By his own account, Unitree struggled to make payroll at times during its first three years before becoming cash-flow positive by late 2018. Wang has remained both CEO and chief technologist at Unitree, overseeing major engineering decisions directly as the company expanded from consumer quadrupeds into humanoid robots. In February 2025, Wang was seated among a small group of prominent Chinese technology founders, including Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei and Alibaba’s Jack Ma, at a high-profile business symposium with President Xi Jinping (South China Morning Post).
Source Notes
This profile draws on Wang’s Wikipedia biography, South China Morning Post and Observer reporting, and the Unitree Robotics Wikipedia article. His public role and title have expanded to include several Chinese government advisory and standards positions, which should be re-verified against current sources as Unitree’s IPO process progresses.