Unitree Surges 460% In Wild IPO Debut, Anthropic Looks to One-Up SpaceX

**Zaid Admani** (0:00)
Public.com presents The Rundown, your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Friday, August 21st. In today's episode, we'll explain why the Treasury Department's attempt to calm the bond markets didn't work. We'll also tell you about a Chinese robotics company's massive IPO and then an update on Anthropic's IPO timeline. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the latest move by private equity to get into sports. We got a great show for you today.
Let's go.
Stocks had a rough day yesterday as Treasury yields surged again. The S&P 500 fell 0.9% and the NASDAQ dropped by 1%. Now, as we've been talking about all week, Treasury yields have been surging. The 30-year US Treasury yield hit 5.3% earlier in the week, its highest level since 2007 And that caught the attention of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and he tried to step in to do something about it. We talked about this on yesterday's show. The Treasury announced that they were stepping into the bond market and buying back some of the older, longer-term debt to improve liquidity and take some pressure off those long-term interest rates. If you want to learn more about that, go check out yesterday's episode. And we're going to be doing a deep dive about it too, so definitely keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. Now, initially, this move by Scott Bessent worked. Yields did fall after the announcement. 30-year yield dropped to under 5.2%. But that didn't last long. Yields started climbing again yesterday, and they're currently hovering near 5.25%. So this move by Scott Bessent didn't ultimately work. I think what's going on is that bond market investors are looking at the combination of this huge government deficit, also inflation risk and the uncertainty around Fed policy, not to mention the Iran War. So you put all that together, and investors are demanding higher yields to own long-term government debt. And that has a ripple effect across the entire economy because higher yields impact borrowing costs and mortgage rates and corporate borrowing and stock valuations. Now the one big winner from this chaos is gold. Gold is on track for its third straight winning week, trading around $4,600 an ounce. But yeah, this bond market drama is not going away. You know, we don't usually cover the bond market this much on the show, but for one, it's August right now, so not a ton of action happening in the stock market. And two, this is a really interesting development on what's going on. Now, next week should have a bit more action. The Fed has their meeting in Jackson Hole, so we'll see what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has to say about all this bond market chaos. Plus, NVIDIA is reporting earnings on Wednesday, so that should be good. We'll continue to stay on top of everything happening, so definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already, and tune in every day to stay in the loop.
Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Chinese Robots. A Chinese robot company that makes humanoid robots just had one of the wildest IPO debuts ever. Shares of Unitree Robotics surged 460% on their first day of trading in Shanghai. The company raised about $905 million as part of the IPO. And after this first day rally, the company is now valued at around $51 billion. I mean, the demand for this IPO was so crazy that retail investors placed over $1.2 trillion worth of orders. And the reason there's so much frenzy around this IPO is that robotics is a sexy industry that investors want exposure to. And Unitree is the leading company in this space. They're the ones behind the viral robots that you've probably seen online, the ones that are doing backflips and dancing and relay racing. So you can see why investors want a piece of that. And by the way, Unitree is actually shipping products. They pulled in roughly $235 million in revenue last year after selling over 5,500 humanoid robots and over 33,000 four-legged robot dogs. Now, I'm not really sure what people are using these robots for right now, but Unitree is selling them. I mean, this could be a massive industry. Morgan Stanley estimates that China's humanoid robot market could grow from about $2 billion today to $15 billion by 2030 And the broader robot industry could become a multi-trillion dollar market over the next few decades. Personally though, I'm not that bullish on humanoid robots. I mean, I'm bullish on robotics, but just not the humanoid kind. I think specialized robots makes more sense, you know, for doing factory work or construction or something. I just don't see a reason for the robot to be human form, you know? In fact, the day after the IPO, Unitree's own founder got on stage at a robot conference in Beijing and said that humanoid robots still aren't as efficient as humans just yet. But look, to be fair, tech advances really fast and with the advancements that we're seeing in AI right now, maybe humanoid robots will surpass humans in the near future. I think they made a movie about that once back in the 80s. Anyways, China is betting aggressively here. They see humanoid robotics as a critical technology in advanced manufacturing. So I think big picture, maybe soon the AI race might be moving from the digital world into the physical world and investors are rushing to get a piece of it. And by the way, this Unitree IPO could end up being bullish for Tesla as well, which is also going all in on humanoid robotics. So let me know in the comments on what you guys think about the humanoid robotics thing. Are you bullish or more on the skeptical side like me? Drop your thoughts on Spotify and YouTube. Sticking with the AI theme here, let's do a quick update on the Anthropic IPO situation. There's a lot of buzz right now that the IPO could be going down pretty soon. I'm talking within the next month or so, and this IPO is expected to be huge. Bloomberg just reported that Anthropic is looking to match or even beat SpaceX's record IPO haul. SpaceX raised $75 billion when they went public back in June, and Anthropic expects to raise even more than that. And the reason there seems to be some urgency right now for the IPO is because Anthropic really needs the money to get more computing power. Building advanced AI models and serving them to customers requires massive amounts of chips, electricity and data centers. Anthropic is already spending a fortune to get access to that infrastructure, and that's why they need more cash, which is why this IPO could be happening soon. Personally, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the S1 and seeing what the P&Ls of an AI lab actually looks like. All the reports indicate that these companies aren't profitable yet, but how bad is the damage? So I can't wait to see the details on that, and what is the market's reaction to that all gonna be? So really hoping this IPO happens pretty soon, and of course, we'll break it all down for you guys. By the way, somewhat related, I recorded a conversation with one of the co-founders of CoreWeave. It was a great conversation. I want a better understanding of how CoreWeave's business works and all the debt that they're taking on. That interview will be posted this weekend, so keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Ross Stores are surging this morning after the off-price retailer posted blowout earnings and raised their full year profit outlook. The company's second quarter revenues jumped 13% year over year to $6.26 billion. That beat Wall Street estimates and same store sales were up by 10%.