China agricultural drone maker XAG raises $182m

Sinovation Ventures and state-backed investors Yuexiu Enterprises and Guangzhou Emerging Industry Development Fund also participated, as did existing investor Chengwei Capital.

Chengwei led a $20 million Series A in 2014. This was followed by a Series B in 2016 led by Mingtai Capital. Beijing-based cybersecurity company TopSec led a Series C in 2019.

XAG claims to be the largest agricultural drones globally with a service area of more than 620 million acres and around 1400 employees. It has six product lines in various aspects of agricultural automation, including remote sensing drones, unmanned vehicles, autonomous driving equipment, internet-of-things, and smart farm management software.

The company was founded in 2007 as Xaircraft with an initial focus on consumer drones. After witnessing the hardships of farmers during a visit to the Xinjiang region in 2013, management decided to change direction and focus on the agricultural sector. XAG claimed to represent more than half of China's market for agricultural drones as of 2019.

“Automatic driving tests have started in many cities in China. We believe a similar technology in agriculture will help liberate labor. We are willing to work with XAG to promote the cutting-edge technologies in rural areas and jointly create high-efficiency agricultural infrastructure,” said Tianhang Hu, a managing director of Baidu Capital.

Baidu is considered one of the leading players in China’s automatic driving segment. In September, its Apollo Robotaxi program demonstrated fully automated driving capability without the use of a safety driver.

Previous private equity activity in the Chinese drone space includes investments in Ehang and Yuneec. Rising competition is seen as requiring differentiation through niche capabilities. Earlier this year, Airlook, a 3D map provider that specializes in aeronautical data collection and analysis, raised nearly RMB100 million in an extended Series B round.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• Sinovation Ventures
• Softbank
• Agriculture