Zhongke Yuandongli, a Beijing agricultural-robotics firm incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Microelectronics, has closed a B2 round of several hundred million yuan led by Chery Holdings’ Chery Intelligent Technology. The money funds core research, scaled delivery of new-energy smart farm machines and embodied-intelligence agricultural robots, and faster overseas expansion. Chery brings more than cash: the carmaker will share engineering validation, supply chain, production quality and global channels.
The firm is a national little-giant in agricultural robotics, with a lineage of mentorship. It is led by Li Deyi, a Chinese Academy of Engineering academician who proposed the driving brain concept for intelligent vehicles, and founded by his student Han Wei, a Tsinghua computer graduate and CAS senior engineer. Rather than discuss replacement, the team built a full unmanned operation capability across tillage, management, harvest and transport.
L4 on the farm
While most unmanned farm machines on the market reach only L1 navigation, Zhongke Yuandongli’s products already run at L4, commercially and at scale. Its new-energy route, pure-electric and methanol-hydrogen, covers 25 to 340 horsepower, the first full-range new-energy smart-tractor line, breaking a foreign grip on high-horsepower kit. It has completed over one million mu of standardised unmanned operations across more than twenty provinces, and adapted its system to a Belarusian tractor plant for spring ploughing.
The tailwind is global. MarketsandMarkets puts the agricultural-robot market at 17.73 billion US dollars in 2025, rising to 56.26 billion by 2030 at a 26 per cent compound rate. China, already the world’s largest agricultural-drone nation with over 300,000 units and 460 million mu of annual coverage, pulled drones into its national agricultural strategy in 2026. As policy drives machine-for-man in farming, the firm frames robots as perceivers, deciders and learners, not merely tools.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.