Zhongke Yuan Dynamics has closed a several-hundred-million-yuan B2 round led by Chery Intelligent Technology, a unit of Chery Holdings. The proceeds will fund core R&D in new-energy smart agricultural machinery and embodied-AI farm robots, scaled delivery and faster overseas expansion. The firm has completed eight rounds, backed by a mix of state and top-tier private investors.
Chery’s entry is not just cash. As a leading carmaker, Chery brings deep automotive know-how, and the two will collaborate across R&D, engineering validation, supply chain, production quality and global channels to speed productisation and internationalisation of new-energy smart farm machinery and embodied-AI agri-robots.
Zhongke Yuan Dynamics was incubated by the CAS Institute of Microelectronics and is a national little-giant in agricultural robotics. Its scientific weight comes from academician Li Deyi, a pioneer of autonomous-driving theory and the ‘driving brain’ concept, as chief scientist, and founder, chairman and CEO Han Wei, a Tsinghua graduate and former CAS senior engineer with years in farm-robot R&D.
With a ‘new energy plus intelligence’ route, it built the world’s first new-energy smart-machinery line covering 25 to 340 horsepower, pure-electric and methanol-hydrogen, breaking a bottleneck. Its products span the whole farming loop: the Wantu pure-electric tractor, the Zhiniu unmanned smart machinery, the Zhinong tomato-picking robot, multi-function transport robots and spray robots, plus the Zhiyun unmanned-operation system, all with round-the-clock, automated, precise operation.
Where most unmanned farm machines reach only L1 navigation, Zhongke Yuan Dynamics runs L4 and at commercial scale. In April, its unmanned machinery planted cotton in Changji, Xinjiang with centimetre-level straight-line error and uniform depth and spacing. Overseas, its Zhiyun system adapted to a Minsk Tractor Works model for spring tillage in Belarus. Its products serve fields, pastures and orchards, with over one million mu of standardised operations across more than 20 provinces and ongoing overseas validation.
MarketsandMarkets puts the global agricultural-robot market at US$17.73 billion in 2025, rising to US$56.26 billion by 2030 at a 26.0 per cent compound rate. China, the world’s largest agricultural-drone nation with over 300,000 units and 460 million mu of annual coverage, added drones to its national strategy in 2026, and policy since 2023 has pushed robot substitution in farming as labour shrinks and ages.
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.
Translated and adapted from OFweek Robot (https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-08/ART-8321204-8120-30696736.html).