In 2005, Fu Guilan and Yu Qian entered the robotic pool-cleaner business.
One year later, WYBOTICS developed its first fully automatic cleaner for in-ground pools. The machine could enter the water unattended, clean the pool floor and walls, and remove dirt and debris through an internal filtration system.
Nearly two decades later, WYBOTICS filed a prospectus with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The manufacturer that had long stood behind pool-robot brands began moving from supporting actor to leading role.
The most important part of the filing is not only revenue and profit. It is the change in the structure of that revenue.
WYBOTICS generated revenue of RMB 378 million, RMB 544 million and RMB 812 million in 2023, 2024 and 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 46.6% from 2023 to 2025. Net profit over the same period was RMB 61 million, RMB 71 million and RMB 100 million. In 2025, the company had capacity for 624,000 units and produced 615,700, taking utilization to 98.7%.
Those figures show that WYBOTICS is no longer a pool-robot brand experimenting on a small scale. It is a manufacturer with real shipment capacity. The more important change is that it is moving from OEM and ODM toward its own brands.
In its earlier years, WYBOTICS looked like a typical OEM/ODM company in pool robotics. According to an earlier version of the prospectus, ODM revenue accounted for 85.13%, 96.35%, 97.40% and 94.54% of total revenue from 2019 through the first half of 2022. Most of its revenue came from developing, manufacturing and delivering products for customers rather than selling directly to end users under its own brands.
The OEM/ODM model has advantages. Orders are clear, customer requirements are defined, and a company can scale around cost, delivery, quality and engineering. It also has limits: the brand asset belongs to someone else, the relationship with end users belongs to someone else, and the manufacturer has limited control over channel pricing and user feedback.
The Hong Kong listing application shows that this structure has changed significantly. Branded products accounted for 67.1% of revenue in 2023, 72.4% in 2024 and 83.5% in 2025. ODM products fell to 15.6% of revenue in 2025.
This is not a matter of opening an independent website or listing a few products on Amazon. The nature of the company's revenue has changed. Many manufacturers say they want to build a brand. The difficult part is making branded products the main source of revenue. WYBOTICS has now crossed that line.
The shift is equally clear in its channels. In 2025, Amazon generated RMB 404 million for WYBOTICS, accounting for 49.7% of total revenue. Shopify generated RMB 121.7 million, representing 22.9% of online sales of branded products. Offline third-party sellers of branded products generated RMB 131 million, or 16.1% of total revenue. At the same time, the top five customers fell to 22.0% of revenue.
WYBOTICS was able to move toward its own brands at this point because of two tailwinds: products shifted from corded to cordless, and channels shifted from offline to online. Cordless products lowered the barrier for household users. Amazon, Shopify and other e-commerce channels weakened the grip of traditional specialist pool channels. Manufacturers gained a way to put products directly in front of households overseas.
WYBOTICS is moving from serving brand customers to operating a relationship with end users.
Global shipments of cordless pool robots increased from about 200,000 units in 2020 to 2.5 million in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 67.9%. Cordless penetration rose from 6.6% to 51.5%. In 2024, WYBOTICS held about 9.2% of the global pool-robot market by shipment volume, ranking third worldwide and first among Chinese companies. In cordless pool robots, its shipment share reached 19.7%, ranking first.
WYBOTICS has not overtaken traditional leaders such as Maytronics and Fluidra across the entire pool-robot market. It built scale early in the new cordless product cycle. In the corded era, established pool brands, specialist channels and after-sales networks were stronger. Cordless products are lighter, easier for consumers to operate and easier to explain online, bringing the category closer to consumer electronics. That created an opening for Chinese manufacturers to build their own brands.
For WYBOTICS, moving from OEM/ODM to its own brand is only the first step. Cordless products and online channels opened the path from manufacturer to brand owner, but those two tailwinds do not yet constitute a long-term moat. The next generation of pool robots may bring docking stations, automatic recovery, automatic charging, automatic waste removal, AI perception and water-quality management, upgrading the product from a “pool-cleaning machine” to a “pool-maintenance system.”
This is where the difficult part begins.
An OEM is judged mainly on manufacturing, quality and delivery. A brand owner must also take responsibility for product definition, brand communication, channel control, pricing, after-sales service and user feedback. Brand customers once handled many of those functions. WYBOTICS now has to build them itself.
The numbers show that WYBOTICS already has scale. In 2024, it held about 9.2% of the global pool-robot market by shipment volume but only about 5.6% by GMV. The products are selling, but the brand premium has not yet been fully established.
Channels and globalization will also become heavier responsibilities. Amazon and Shopify give the company direct access to users, but they also bring advertising, ratings, returns, inventory and after-sales costs. Pool robots involve waterproofing, batteries, safety, recalls and patents. WYBOTICS' voluntary recall of some cordless pool robots in 2026 shows that once a company owns the brand, quality, compliance and user trust become its own responsibility.
An IPO would therefore be only WYBOTICS' first step.
Moving from supporting actor to leading role is not just a matter of appearing under its own name in a prospectus or putting its own brand on a product. It means moving from the manufacturer behind other brands to a brand company that faces users around the world, defines the product experience, and takes responsibility for channels and after-sales service.
That is the real test of WYBOTICS' move from supporting actor to leading role.
