Recently, Beijing Zhongke Yuandongli Technology closed a nine-figure B2 round, invested by Chery Intelligent Technology, a unit of Chery Holdings. The proceeds will fund core research on new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied agricultural robots, scaled delivery and faster overseas expansion. Tianyancha shows the firm has completed eight rounds, backed by a string of top investors: state-linked Guoke, Zhongguancun Development, Beijing Kewei, Jilin Zhongke and Hubei Hi-Tech, plus Haiyi, CICC Capital, CCVC and Innoangel.
Chery’s entry is not just money. As a top Chinese carmaker, Chery brings deep automotive know-how. The two will coordinate on research, engineering validation, supply chain, production quality and global channels to speed productisation, scaling and internationalisation of new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied agricultural robots.
Zhongke Yuandongli was born hard-tech. Spun out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microelectronics, it is a national little-giant specialised enterprise in agricultural robots.
Beyond the research gene, it carries a mentor-disciple startup label. The firm is led by Li Deyi, honorary chairman of the Chinese Association of Artificial Intelligence and a CAE academician, as chief scientist. Li long studied uncertain AI, cloud computing and self-driving, and coined the “driving brain” concept. Founder, chairman and CEO Han Wei is Li’s student, a Tsinghua computer graduate and CAS senior engineer who has worked on farm robots for years.
With these two technical anchors, Zhongke Yuandongli gathered a core team in AI, robotics and smart agriculture from Tsinghua, UC Berkeley and others, building a full agricultural-robot research system and unmanned capability across the whole farmland cycle.
In autonomous farm machinery, Li envisages a future farm robot that learns: the ox retires, the iron ox ploughs, farmers move to cities, experts farm. Replacing heavy field labour with machines, plus standardised smart agronomy, fundamentally changes the extensive, experience-based old model.
On industry strength, Zhongke Yuandongli follows a “new energy plus intelligence” route, building pure-electric and alcohol-hydrogen smart machinery, and a global-first product system covering 25 to 340 horsepower. It has built unmanned capability across tillage, management, harvest and transport, with a matrix of whole-process machinery, new-energy smart tractors, embodied farm robots and smart implements. These include the Wantu pure-electric smart tractor, the Zhiniu unmanned work machine, and Zhinong tomato-picking and transport robots. Most unmanned farm machines on the market only reach L1 navigation. Zhongke Yuandongli is already at L4 and commercial at scale.
In April this year in Xinjiang, its unmanned smart tractor with a “wide-early-optimal” seeder ran without manual control, doing precise sowing and covering. Line error stayed at centimetre level. Overseas, in May its Zhiyun unmanned system adapted to a Minsk Tractor Works model in Belarus and joined spring joint tillage. Its products run commercially in fields, pastures and orchards, with over 1 million mu of unmanned standard work, across more than 20 provinces, plus overseas validation.
Agricultural intelligence is the trend. MarketsandMarkets sees the global farm-robot market rising from 17.73 billion US dollars in 2025 to 56.26 billion in 2030, a 26.0 per cent compound annual rate.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robotics report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.