they're a chinese company and this is a VC funded western company; so that's half the answer.

The other half is yes, of course, any company will fake it till they make it.

But Unitree is definitely making robots.

The demo images look AI generated, so I can understand the impression that this is vaporware. The demo videos look very real to me however.

is using a prototype firmware or hardware platform faking it when you're showing exclusive prototype capabilities and trying to pass them off as reproducible by the production unit?

unitree has done this consistently.