Bybit pre-IPO perpetuals now cover Chinese robotics firm Unitree and AI startup Moonshot AI, the Dubai-based exchange confirmed in an official press release dated 15 August 2026, pushing its TradFi perpetuals catalogue past 200 products.
Both contracts are USDT-denominated and settled, offering price exposure to private companies without share ownership. Bybit’s TradFi perpetuals suite has grown from its April launch to cover equities across US, Hong Kong and South Korean markets, as well as precious metals, indices, and oil.
Unitree’s IPO Numbers Give the Contract Context
Unitree is not a speculative bet on an indefinite future listing. The Hangzhou-based robotics company passed the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s review of its STAR Market IPO application on 1 June 2026, making it only the second company through China’s pilot pre-review mechanism for high-quality technology companies. The China Securities Regulatory Commission’s registration approval is valid for 12 months, per Reuters.
The company plans to raise 4.2 billion yuan (approximately $619.4 million) in proceeds earmarked for robot AI model research, robot body research, new product development, and a smart manufacturing base.
Revenue growth gives the valuation exercise some grip. According to its prospectus, Unitree’s operating revenue ran at 159 million yuan in 2023, climbed to 393 million yuan in 2024, and reached nearly 1.7 billion yuan through 2025. The company is projecting first-half 2026 revenue of between 1.052 billion yuan and 1.128 billion yuan, with net profit attributable to shareholders (excluding non-recurring gains and losses) of between 236 million yuan and 283 million yuan over the same period.
Founder Wang, born in 1990 and a 2016 company founder, was seated in the front row at President Xi Jinping’s business symposium in February 2025, per the South China Morning Post. That visibility carries weight in the current policy environment around humanoid robotics.
The post-listing dynamic is already shaping regulatory expectations. After Unitree’s shares surged more than 600% at debut before sharp subsequent swings, the CSRC has informally signalled to banks and institutional investors that future humanoid-robotics IPO applicants will need to demonstrate at least one of: sustainable recurring revenue, a clear path to narrowing losses, or genuine technological innovation, according to the Wall Street Journal. Unitree, at least on the revenue trajectory, meets the first criterion.
Bybit Pre-IPO Perpetuals and the Broader Private-Market Push
Moonshot AI, known for its Kimi AI assistant, rounds out the new additions. It has no confirmed public listing timeline, so the perpetual functions as a pure price-discovery instrument for a company that remains entirely private.
The launch follows a pattern seen earlier this year when Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and others rolled out SpaceX-linked contracts ahead of the company’s June listing. Private-market derivatives are becoming a standard offering for major crypto exchanges, filling the gap between venture-round valuations and eventual public pricing.
The tokenised-stock market provides some backdrop here, though the numbers are more complicated than headline figures suggest. The rwa.xyz tokenised-stocks tracker shows 1.31 million holders, up 123.62% over 30 days, and a distributed value of $2.38 billion. The top platforms by value are Ondo at $832.3 million, bStocks at $616.9 million, and Backed Finance / xStocks at $611.8 million.
Holder growth, though, is running ahead of asset growth. According to The Defiant, total distributed real-world asset value tracked by rwa.xyz slipped approximately 1.4% in the 30 days prior to their report, settling at roughly $31.5 billion. That marked the first monthly contraction after more than a year of steady gains. The represented asset market (assets recorded on-chain but locked on a single platform) stood at around $359 billion over the same period and fell by a similar margin.
Perpetual contracts on pre-IPO names sidestep the liquidity and custody complexity that tokenised equities carry, which is probably why exchanges are leaning into this format. The real test for Bybit’s roster is how the Unitree perpetual prices through the actual STAR Market debut, whenever within that 12-month CSRC window it arrives.
