On 30 September, MengShi Tech closed a Series A+ round above RMB 100 million. The investors included Liding Capital, Hangzhou Heda and Huifu Capital, with Heda coming in as local state capital after the company moved its base to Hangzhou’s Qiantang district. A Series B is already in progress.
The raise signals a bigger shift in how the driverless-mine sector is read. Most players position themselves as autonomous-driving solution vendors. MengShi chose the path of the transport robot from day one, and that framing is not late-stage marketing. Founder Qiu Changwu holds a robotics PhD from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and cut his teeth on industrial robot control systems in his first venture. When he founded MengShi in 2018, the stated aim was a world-class intelligent robot company.
The capital stack tracks the pivot. An angel round in 2018 came from Yijin Capital with strategic backing from Broaden, then a 2021 Pre-A led by the Weichai industry fund, a 2022 Series A with financial investors Liding and Galaxy Ventures, and now local state money. The reading is that the market has accepted a plain truth, driverless mining is not modified vehicles, it is robot haulage as a service, and capital now weighs sustained field operation over algorithm demos.
Reusable Robotics, Real Sites
In September 2026 MengShi’s Huzhou smart-manufacturing base went live, focused on high-end equipment and robot manufacturing, targeting self-production of core products and import substitution, which cements its identity as a robot company rather than a software integrator.
The technical logic treats the truck as mere hardware. The real asset is the whole perception, decision and execution system. MengShi builds its own VCS vehicle control, FOS dispatch, CSS cloud operations and a simulation platform, with cross-scene reuse above 85 per cent across mines, ports and factories, compatible with diesel, electric, hybrid and hydrogen powertrains.
The proof is in project data. Tongling became China’s first fully unmanned mine. Ruoqiang hosts the country’s longest unmanned haul route, running 24 hours with loaded speeds of 40 km per hour. Bachu in southern Xinjiang runs 33 hundred-tonne electric trucks as a normal operation. At Shanghai Lingang, electric yard trucks between warehouse and dock have run stably for years, cutting on-site staff by 80 per cent, lifting combined efficiency 15 per cent and adding 20 per cent to operating hours.
Signed project value has passed RMB 1 billion with more than 30 customers. MengShi is also using Morocco as a hinge for African and European mining logistics, a sign the robot-haulage model is being pitched well beyond China.
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. The full original (in Chinese) is at https://robot.ofweek.com/2026-09/ART-8321202-12003-30705431.html.