Bigwave Robotics and Brills close up 64% and 56% after 200%-plus debut spikes

Bigwave Robotics listed on KOSDAQ on September 29, 2026 at an IPO price of ₩18,000, traded as high as ₩60,000 and closed at ₩29,500, up 63.9%, for a market capitalisation of about ₩303 billion. Brills followed on October 1: priced at ₩19,500, it opened at ₩61,800, touched ₩62,100 (+218%) and closed at ₩30,450, up 56.15%. Each stock finished its first day roughly 51% below its intraday high.

Why it matters: these are the first robot listings in a crowded autumn calendar, and they show retail demand for anything labelled robotics running well ahead of what traders were willing to hold by the close. AL Robot, a force/torque sensor maker, is next, with retail subscription on October 26–27.

What Bigwave and Brills actually sell

Neither company earns its money from humanoids. Bigwave Robotics is a platform business: Marosol, a robot automation platform, and Sollink, an integrated control platform, sold to companies deploying robots on their sites. Its offer drew 1,109:1 institutional demand and 1,375:1 retail subscription, with about ₩4.95 trillion of deposits chasing an offering that valued the company at ₩184.9 billion.

Brills, founded in 2015, is a robot integrator that sells modular automation lines — industrial and collaborative robots plus autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) — into automotive, battery and semiconductor plants. It reported 2025 revenue of ₩23.76 billion and operating profit of ₩2.43 billion, and first-half 2026 revenue of ₩13.7 billion with 56.7% from overseas. At its listing ceremony it demonstrated a humanoid, a quadruped and a low-profile AMR, and it plans to add 2,993.52 m² to its Songdo headquarters production site and expand the physical AI data centre in its humanoid centre to 32 GPUs. The humanoid and quadruped work is a development line; the revenue is integration.

The pops faded within hours

Both books were small relative to demand. At retail ratios above 1,300:1, with deposits near ₩5 trillion for each deal, subscribers received a sliver of what they applied for, and the unfilled demand arrived at the open. Brills opened at ₩61,800, within ₩300 of its high. By the close, Bigwave had given back about 73% of its intraday gain and Brills about 74%. A 56–64% first-day return is still a strong result for the issuers; it is a weak one for anyone who bought the open.

The pattern is familiar from Shanghai. Unitree priced at 150.80 yuan, touched 1,100 yuan on its August 19 debut and was 46% off that high five sessions later, as we reported in Unitree’s post-IPO slide. By September 15, the South China Morning Post was reporting that Beijing would tighten IPO scrutiny of humanoid makers, with a focus on revenue durability. The Korean listings are far smaller, and neither company is a robot-hardware brand on Unitree’s scale. The first-day shape was the same.

Who is next in the queue

AL Robot, founded in 2017, makes force/torque sensors and motor control devices for collaborative robots, medical robots and automated equipment, and supplies Korean and Japanese robot makers. It is offering 2.4 million shares at ₩15,700–17,600, or ₩37.7–42.2 billion, with Daishin Securities as lead manager. It reported 2025 revenue of ₩14.98 billion and first-half 2026 revenue of ₩8.4 billion, up 33%, and says part of the proceeds will fund component development aimed at humanoids.

Behind it, RideFlux filed for a KOSDAQ listing in August. The real test for this cohort is not day one but the first set of quarterly results as listed companies, set against a listed Korean robot sector that posted a ₩134.3 billion operating loss in the first half. Brills, at least, reported an operating profit for 2025.