Ten thousand AI drone swarms are praised by Elon Musk, and "Damo Dazhikong" has completed hundreds of millions of yuan in financing | HardcoreTech Exclusive
Author｜Huang Nan
Editor｜Yuan Silai
HardcoreTech has learned that Shenzhen Damoda Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Damoda Intelligent Control") has recently completed a Series A financing of several hundred million yuan. This round is led by Tongchuangweiye, with CMB International, China Merchants Venture Capital, Shenzhen High-tech Investment, Caixin Group participating, and Gengxin Capital serving as the exclusive strategic financial advisor. The funds will be used to increase the research and development of the AI product line and expand the overseas market.
Damoda Intelligent Control became known to the outside world in September 2024 when it achieved the simultaneous liftoff of 10,197 drones for the first time, breaking two Guinness World Records for "the most drones simultaneously lifted off controlled by a single computer" and "the largest aerial pattern formed by the most drones", which was reposted and commented on by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Then during the seven-day National Day holiday, Damoda Intelligent Control performed a relay show of ten thousand drones every day for five districts in Shenzhen. Currently, the company has completed tens of thousands of drone swarm performances, with over 50 billion online and offline viewers. It has appeared on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala five times and broken the Guinness World Record many times.
Drone swarm performance (Image source / Official)
Damoda Intelligent Control was established in 2016, focusing on the research and development, production, sales and service of the unmanned aircraft swarm automatic performance system. It is a national specialized and new "little giant" enterprise with more than 100 core independent intellectual property rights. The company's core product is the automatic unmanned aircraft swarm system, including unmanned aircraft, flight control systems, unmanned aircraft intelligent storage boxes and ground stations and other software and hardware integrated equipment.
Unmanned aircraft automatic performance refers to the use of unmanned aircraft swarm flight, accompanied by music or other lighting effects, to form various patterns, words and animations in the air to provide a highly ornamental visual experience.
Based on the progress of unmanned aircraft swarm networking technology in communication, path planning, collision avoidance and other aspects, it can achieve efficient collaborative interaction, information sharing and task completion, with the characteristics of environmental protection, safety and innovation. It has a wide range of applications in large-scale events, cultural and tourism resident performances, air intelligent media advertising, urban lighting projects and other scenarios.
During the National Day in 2024, the unmanned aircraft performance in Shenzhen attracted more than 1.2 million viewers. The number of people in the business districts where the performance was held, such as Shenye Shangcheng, Dayun Tiandi and Mission Hills New Town, reached 2.462 million, with a year-on-year growth of 117%; the operating income was 203 million yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 65.8%. Including tourists from Hong Kong and Macao, the city received a total of 1.9903 million tourists from other provinces, with a year-on-year growth of 107.1% on a comparable basis.
Drone swarm forming the pattern of "Great Roc Spreading Its Wings" in the air (Image source / Official)
Damoda Intelligent Control is the pioneer of domestic unmanned aircraft swarm light show performances. In 2016, the company released China's first unmanned aircraft swarm product and has successively landed in multiple scenarios such as indoor professional stage theaters, theme parks and cultural tourism. Among them, Damoda Intelligent Control reached a cooperation with Zhuhai Chimelong Ocean Kingdom to provide a theme park resident performance for the park, taking off punctually at 8 p.m. Beijing time every night. This is also the world's first theme park unmanned aircraft swarm light show resident regular performance.
In the unmanned aircraft light show performance, as the size of the fleet increases, the more the number of flight equipment, the richer the picture expressiveness. But at the same time, the amount of communication data increases geometrically, which has extremely high requirements for the background load and database analysis capabilities of the unmanned aircraft swarm.
The core technical team of Damoda Intelligent Control comes from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Central South University, and Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the proportion of technical personnel exceeds 30%. Chairman Liu Hanbin has the design experience of general aviation aircraft and has more than 30 years of software and hardware technology accumulation.
The company independently researches and develops unmanned aircraft hardware equipment, using high-performance motors, sensors and control systems and other core components. During the performance of the unmanned aircraft, its full-time automatic and unperceived replenishment function can automatically detect and replenish the missing or faulty equipment to ensure the continuity and integrity of the performance.
Ten thousand AI unmanned aircraft swarm (Image source / Enterprise)
In terms of software algorithms, Damoda Intelligent Control has released the new generation unmanned aircraft swarm automatic performance system V3, and through the development of an intelligent script editing platform, it realizes the production of script content from semi-automation to full automation.
Damoda Intelligent Control has developed a set of trajectory planning algorithms. After the customer provides the content requirements, the text script can be quickly converted into animation effects and corresponding algorithm codes through the script editing platform, and the flight trajectory file of the unmanned aircraft can be automatically generated according to different performance requirements. This innovation not only greatly reduces the editing time and use threshold, but also the optimal flight trajectory generated by the system can effectively improve the stability and accuracy of the flight performance.
Chairman Liu Hanbin of Damoda Intelligent Control told HardcoreTech that as the unmanned aircraft swarm performance moves towards the outbreak period, the industrial development is also developing towards four major trends: safety, automation, intelligence and networking.
Safety is the lifeline of the low-altitude economy industry, including anti-electromagnetic interference, system reliability, etc. To ensure the safety of the performance, Damoda Intelligent Control has formulated a strict safety specification by precisely controlling the flight altitude, speed and distance of the unmanned aircraft to ensure the safety during the performance. At the same time, it is also equipped with a professional flight team and ground support personnel, ready to deal with various emergencies at any time.
Automation refers to the fully automatic trajectory generation and optimization, and autonomous charging in the process of unmanned aircraft performance. With the development of AI large models and embodied intelligence technology, unmanned aircraft, as an important end-side hardware, has also begun to integrate edge computing power and embrace intelligence to improve equipment performance and application capabilities, and accelerate the realization of group intelligence. Networking refers to the communication and data exchange between unmanned aircraft and other devices, systems or networks. This includes communication with the ground station and collaborative operations with other unmanned aircraft.
Liu Hanbin pointed out, "Through networking, unmanned aircraft can achieve functions such as remote monitoring, data sharing and collaborative decision-making. In the era of low-altitude economy, the current air network and wireless broadband network are still far behind the development of the low-altitude economy, and 5G has not achieved full coverage. As an important feature of the current era, there is still a long way to go to solve the problem of unmanned aircraft autonomous network technology." According to him, the company will release a new generation of fully automated swarm product V4 in January 2025.
Drone swarm forming the pattern of "DMD Spaceship" in the air (Image source / Official)
HardcoreTech has learned that Damoda Intelligent Control has now established sky digital new media regular application bases in more than 50 cities including Shenzhen, Chongqing, Shanghai, Beijing, Dalian, Zhuhai, Nanjing, Wuxi and Huai'an, and has successively entered more than 100 cultural and tourism scenic spots and theme parks such as Beijing Gubei Water Town, Zunyi Wujiang Village, Huai'an West Journey Amusement Park, Zhuhai Chimelong, Shanghai Haichang, Wuxi Nianhua Bay, Nanning Fantawild and Nanjing Dragon Valley, Huzhou Dragon Dream.
On the one hand, the unmanned aircraft performance can be compared to the fireworks scene, which is a more environmentally friendly and economical art form, and as an air media, it has huge commercial value; on the other hand, Damoda Intelligent Control has standardized the technology, not only has the ability to perform large-scale unmanned aircraft performances with more than ten thousand drones, but also can output and sell standardized unmanned aircraft swarm products.
In the overseas market, Damoda Intelligent Control has entered more than 20 countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, providing unmanned aircraft hardware equipment and supporting solutions for customers. Its overseas revenue accounts for 30% of the overall business. Next, it will increase investment in the overseas market and expand the research and development of the existing product line to accelerate the expansion of a larger market space.
Investor Comments:
Zhang Yiwei, Partner of Tongchuangweiye Technology Industry said that the low-altitude economy market has huge potential, but the improvement of infrastructure still needs time. Taking the performance scene as the entry point, on the one hand, it can achieve a faster business closed loop. On the other hand, through the accumulation of high-frequency communication capabilities between unmanned aircraft, the underlying technology reserves can be improved, laying a solid foundation for the expansion in more application scenarios in the future.
Wang Jing, Head of Intelligent Terminal of Tongchuangweiye said that the unmanned aircraft performance is the perfect integration of unmanned aircraft swarm technology and art. While Damoda continues to iterate and lead the world in technology and products, it pays more attention to cultivating the ecosystem, working with global partners and artists to build a platform company full of creativity and imagination. We expect Damoda to seize the opportunity of Chinese brands going global, bringing the cutting-edge technology and the most valuable concepts to the world, and letting the power of innovation and culture fly to every corner of the world.
Gan Zixin, Assistant General Manager of the Investment Department of China Merchants Venture Capital said that China Merchants Venture Capital will rely on the advantages of the group's diverse industrial scenarios to inject strong impetus into the future development of Damoda Intelligent Control, helping the company's technological innovation and market expansion in the field of intelligent control. Jointly promote the breakthrough based on group sensing and intelligent control technology, and contribute to the development of the industry. The success of this financing marks an important step for Damoda Intelligent Control in the capital market, and also indicates that the company will have greater development space and market potential in the future.
Shenzhen High-tech Investment Team said that under the policy support of the low-altitude economy, Damoda Intelligent Control is in a rapid outbreak period of enterprise performance in the face of the dividend period of going overseas. At the same time, the enterprise increases its investment in the field of artificial intelligence, deeply combines the unmanned aircraft swarm technology with artificial intelligence to solve the pain points in many scenarios, and creates a real air "embodied intelligence". Damoda Intelligent Control continues to expand the intelligent application scenarios in the industrial field and will become a leading enterprise in intelligent swarm technology in the future.