Beijing Zhongke Yuandongli Technology recently closed a several-hundred-million-yuan B2 round led by Chery Smart Technology, an arm of Chery Holdings. The proceeds will fund R&D on new-energy smart agricultural machinery and embodied-AI agricultural robots, scaled delivery and faster overseas expansion. Tianyancha records show the company has completed eight funding rounds, backed by a mix of state-linked investors including the CAS-founded Guoke venture arm, Zhongguancun Development fund and regional state capital, alongside first-tier houses such as Hylink Group, CICC Capital, CCV and InnoAngel.
Chery’s entry is not just writing a cheque. As a major Chinese carmaker, Chery brings deep automotive know-how. The two sides will combine strengths across R&D, engineering validation, supply chain, production quality control and global channels to speed productisation, scale and internationalisation of new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied-AI agri-robots.
Zhongke Yuandongli was incubated by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Microelectronics and is a national “little giant” specialised SME in agricultural robotics. Its scientific pedigree is matched by a mentor-disciple founding story. Chief scientist Li Deyi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, long studied uncertain artificial intelligence, cloud computing and autonomous driving and coined the “driving brain” concept. Founder, chairman and CEO Han Wei, a Tsinghua computer-science PhD and CAS senior engineer, has spent years on agricultural robotics.
Under that pairing, the team built a complete agri-robot R&D system with members from Tsinghua and UC Berkeley. Li’s vision for the future farm machine is a learning field robot: the ox retires, the iron ox ploughs, the farmer moves to the city, and the expert farms. Replacing heavy manual labour with machines, plus standardised and intelligent agronomy, overturns the old labour- and experience-based model.
With a “new energy plus intelligence” route, the company built the world’s first new-energy smart agricultural machinery line spanning 25 to 340 horsepower, breaking a foreign stranglehold. It now covers the full ploughing, management, harvest and transport cycle with an unmanned operation system, whole-machine new-energy machinery, embodied-AI agri-robots and smart implements, including the Wantu series of electric tractors, the Zhiniu unmanned operation machines, and the Zhiyin tomato-picking and multi-function transport robots.
While most unmanned farm machines on the market only reach L1 navigation, Zhongke Yuandongli’s products already reach L4 and are in commercial, scaled use. In April, its unmanned machinery worked cotton fields in Changji, Xinjiang, with centimetre-level straight-line error and uniform depth and spacing. Overseas, its Zhiyun unmanned system was adapted to a Belarusian tractor plant and put to spring ploughing. The company has logged more than 1 million mu (roughly 667 square kilometres) of standardised unmanned operations across more than 20 provinces, with overseas validation under way.
MarketsandMarkets projects the global agricultural-robot market will grow from US$17.73 billion in 2025 to US$56.26 billion by 2030, a 26.0 per cent compound annual rate. China is the world’s largest agricultural-drone nation with over 300,000 units and annual operations above 460 million mu (about 307,000 square kilometres), and in 2026 drones entered the national agricultural strategy for the first time. Analysts expect China’s agri-robot market to surpass 16 billion yuan in 2026.
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.