Zhongke Yuandongli, an agricultural-robotics national “little giant” spun out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has closed a several-hundred-million-yuan B2 round led by the smart-technology arm of carmaker Chery. The proceeds go mainly to research and development of new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied-intelligence agricultural robots, to scaled delivery and to faster overseas expansion. Tianyancha shows the firm has completed eight funding rounds, backed by a mix of state-linked forces such as the CAS-origin Guochuang fund, the Zhongguancun development fund and Beijing Kewei, plus top private houses including CICC Capital, CCV and InnoAngel.
Chery’s entry is not a passive cheque. As a top Chinese carmaker it brings deep automotive know-how, and the two will combine strengths across research, engineering validation, supply chain, production quality control and global channels to speed productisation, scale and internationalisation of new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied agricultural robots.
A hard-tech pedigree built on a mentor-and-student team
Zhongke Yuandongli was incubated by the Institute of Microelectronics at the CAS and carries the “little giant” label for agricultural robots. Its chief scientist is Li Deyi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former honorary chair of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence, who coined the “driving brain” concept for autonomous driving. Founder, chairman and CEO Han Wei is Li’s student, a Tsinghua computer-science graduate and a CAS senior engineer with years in agricultural robotics.
Around those two, the firm assembled a core team from Tsinghua, UC Berkeley and other schools, building a full agricultural-robot research system and unmanned capability across the whole farming cycle. Li’s vision for the future farm machine: a learning robotic tractor, with the yellow ox retired, the iron ox ploughing, farmers moving to the city and experts tending the land.
On that base the firm runs a “new energy plus intelligence” line, building pure-electric and methanol-hydrogen smart machinery, and claims the world’s first product system covering 25 to 340 horsepower with full new-energy smart farm equipment, breaking a key bottleneck. Its range spans ploughing, management, harvest and transport, with an unmanned operation system, new-energy smart tractors, embodied agricultural robots and smart implements, including the Wantu electric tractor, the Zhiniu unmanned machine and the Zhinong tomato-picking and transport robots.
From L1 to L4 in the field
While most unmanned farm machines in China sit at L1 navigation, Zhongke Yuandongli says its products already reach L4 and are deployed at commercial scale. In April in Changji, Xinjiang, its unmanned machine ran a “wide-early-premium” cotton planter with no manual control, holding centimetre-level straight-line error and even sowing depth and spacing. Overseas, in May its Zhiyun unmanned system was adapted to a Minsk Tractor Works model in Belarus and put to spring combined tillage.
The firm has commercial use across fields, pastures and orchards, over one million mu of standardised operations completed, coverage in more than 20 provincial regions, and ongoing overseas validation, pushing farm machines from single tools toward perceptible, deciding, executable and self-learning embodied agricultural robots.
Agricultural intelligence is now a clear trend. MarketsandMarkets puts the global farm-robot market at USD 17.73 billion in 2025, rising to USD 56.26 billion by 2030, a 26.0 per cent compound rate. The United States, through firms like Carbon Robotics, has mature laser-weeding at scale. Japan, pressed by an ageing population, pushes unmanned farm machines via Kubota, Yanmar and Iseki. Germany leans on devices like BoniRob for field inspection. Britain targets fruit and mushroom sorting with machine vision and arms. China is the world’s top agricultural-drone nation with over 300,000 units and more than 460 million mu of annual drone work, and in 2026 drones entered the national agricultural strategy for the first time.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original OFweek Robot report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.