Agricultural Autonomous Driving Firm AIForceTech Secures Round A+ Financing
AIForceTech, an agricultural autonomous driving enterprise, announced on Tuesday that it had secured investment through an A+ round of financing, led by China Creation Ventures (CCV) and followed by Vertex Ventures and Delian Capital.
AIForceTech has already obtained an A round of financing in June 2021, driving its total amount of the two rounds to over 100 million yuan in less than one year. Its founder, Han Wei, said that the latest round of financing will be mainly used for product research and development and market expansion.
Incubated in the Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, AIForceTech has the largest unmanned working area of agricultural machinery in China. The company is committed to improving farmland operation efficiency and solving issues related to agricultural labor shortages.
In recent years, China’s urbanization rate has been rising. The results of the seventh national census in 2020 show that China’s urbanization rate has reached 63.89%, which leads agricultural labor shortage. Therefore, companies have been looking for ways to help farmers improve their efficiency while using fewer resources.
The combination of autonomous driving and agriculture is expected to greatly reduce the problem. Unmanned agricultural machinery can not only alleviate the labor shortage and improve the labor production efficiency, but can also help farmers find better ways to do things they’ve traditionally been doing.
The AIForceTech team has been involved in artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and smart agriculture for a long time. The startup has a complete autonomous driving and robot system and can also provide support for unmanned farming operations.
AIForceTech has launched a number of products, including those that provide services for large-scale agricultural production groups and large agricultural households.
The “virtual machine hand” can be installed in ordinary agricultural machinery. With some modification, ordinary tractors can now have the ability of unmanned and precise operations all day and night.
The company’s intelligent agricultural machinery series include tractors with horsepower ranging between 150 and 240. Even the products with or without a cabin can be equipped with the technology to run unmanned.
The agricultural robot series includes pesticide spraying robots and weeding robots that are able to improve weeding efficiency by greatly reducing herbicide application.
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AIForceTech has reached agreements several large firms, including China Beidahuang Industry Group, Rongtong Asset Management Group, COFCO Corp, and many other modern agricultural machinery cooperatives. In Heilongjiang, Jilin, Beijing, Hebei, Guangxi and other places, over 100,000 mu (66 km2) of unmanned operations have been completed by the company, and more than 30 tons of vegetables have been planted. At present, relying on the sales of unmanned vehicles and their services, the company has garnered nearly 10 million yuan in revenue.
