Unmanned Boat Tech Company Orcauboat Completes Round A+ Financing

Orca Electronic Intelligent Technology Corporation Co., Ltd. (Orcauboat), an unmanned boat startup, announced on Saturday that it has completed a round A+ of financing totaling 50 million yuan ($7.5 million). The leading investor was Edge Ventures, while co-investors were China Capital Management, Zhongguancun Zhongnuo Fund, Forebright, TusStar and other institutions.

The funds are mainly to be used for the R&D of unmanned environmental protection boat products, cruise ship products, the “Zhibo” unmanned system, further construction and promotion of domestic and overseas sales networks and brands, formulation of industry standards, and layout of upstream and downstream industrial chains.

Orcauboat was established in 2017. Its product line covers driverless environmental protection boats, intelligent manned cruise boats and an unmanned driving system. At present, the firm’s unmanned environmental protection boat products have arrived in hundreds of bodies of water in ten countries, including China, the UK and Spain, and the first standardized intelligent manned cruise ship products have been recently developed and gradually put into use at various well-known attractions.

The firm’s three standardized products, namely the “SMURF” unmanned cleaning ship, as well as the “TITAN” unmanned cleaning ship and unmanned mowing ship, can perform water surface cleaning, water grass harvesting, water quality monitoring, and patrol. Coupled with the self-developed charging dock and the intelligent management platform, it realizes a fully intelligent and data-based environmental protection operation, maintenance operation and management closed loop.

Traditionally, only 20 mu (3.29 acres) can be maintained by a single human worker, while Orcauboat’s driverless cleaning boats can cover an area of 150 mu (24.71 acres), realizing 24-hour all-weather intelligent operations and water maintenance.

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According to 2020 statistics from Orcauboat, there are currently 7.4 million mu (1,905 square miles) of artificial lakes in China, and the total continues to expand. There are reportedly around 100,000 reservoirs which need to be maintained in real time, nearly one million kilometers of inland rivers, and 32,000 kilometers of coastline. All of these bodies of water have the potential for intelligent and automated water cleaning solutions and data collection and management, with an estimated market size of 100 billion yuan ($15.0 billion).