A product generates hundreds of millions in revenue. The world's first consumer-grade snow-clearing courtyard robot company secures 200 million in financing | Exclusive from HardcoreTech.

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

HardcoreTech exclusively learned that the courtyard robot company "Hanyang Technology Yarbo" recently announced the completion of a 200 million yuan financing round. This round of financing is led by Yuantai Capital, with well-known industrial investors and financial investment institutions participating. The company's shareholder lineup includes listed company industrial backgrounds, top CVCs, state-owned backgrounds, and well-known financial investment institutions. The financing funds will be used to improve the supply chain and mass production delivery level, increase R & D investment, and accelerate product optimization and iteration. Gengxin Capital serves as the long-term exclusive financial advisor.

"Hanyang Technology Yarbo" is a company that HardcoreTech has been following for a long time. Since its establishment in 2015, it has focused on the research and development and manufacturing of all-scenario universal courtyard robots.

The company starts from the ultra-low temperature snow removal scene with a strong demand in the courtyard and a high challenge for the main body. The product positioning is precise and the strategy is clear. After several iterations in 8 years, it adopts the unique form of "1 + N" with a single robot host and multiple application modules, which can meet the differentiated needs of users throughout the year, complete the PMF (Product Market Fit) verification, and is the leading enterprise of global snow removal robots.

Yarbo Robot Product Matrix (Image Source / Hanyang Technology)

As the category creator of snow removal robots and multi-functional courtyard robots, "Hanyang Technology Yarbo" is currently the only global company that has achieved commercialization of consumer-grade snow removal robots and multi-functional courtyard robots, and has crossed the "valley of death" stage from technology research and development to product landing and commercialization.

In 2024, "Hanyang Technology Yarbo" launched a full-payment pre-sale on the independent website. Under the premise of an average delivery cycle of up to 5 months, it achieved more than 6,000 user orders, and completed spot supply worldwide through its own factory, with an annual sales volume of over 200 million yuan. The feasibility of the full-payment pre-sale model to a certain extent confirms the differentiation, market scarcity status and potential market space of Yarbo products.

The hardware integration of the 1 + N modular design is extremely difficult, requiring the collaborative work of various customized high-precision and high-performance components, and requiring the enterprise to have a strong innovative hardware design ability and supply chain development ability. Currently, the company has established production factories in Huizhou, Guangdong and Jiashan, Zhejiang, with an annual output of more than 200,000 units.

1 + N Modular Design (Image Source / Hanyang Technology)

HardcoreTech learned that "Hanyang Technology Yarbo" will further deepen strategic cooperation with suppliers and banks this year, increase investment in the supply chain and production capacity to achieve larger-scale mass production and spot delivery. It is expected that the shipment volume in 2025 can reach tens of thousands of units, achieving a 10-fold growth rate for three consecutive years, and simultaneously launching the Pre-IPO planning.

The company is also continuously expanding in scale, with the current R & D staff accounting for more than 50%. It has now established subsidiaries globally and will focus on the recruitment of high-quality talents and organizational structure adjustment to accelerate the global layout, shorten the R & D rhythm and product iteration cycle, and expand the differentiated advantages in technology and product ends. Currently, the company has hundreds of patents, and the patent growth rate of snow removal tools ranks first in the world.

Yarbo Courtyard Robot (Image Source / Hanyang Technology)

In recent years, the courtyard robot track has been highly competitive, and a batch of startups have flocked in. Compared with the two vertical tracks of crowded lawn mowers and pool cleaning robots, Huang Yang, the founder of "Hanyang Technology Yarbo", found during market research that the snow removal scene with strong immediate demand is still a blue ocean market for global users. The annual increment of global snow removal tools exceeds 5 million units, and the market space is broad.

In Europe and the United States, snow removal has the characteristics of regulatory demand. Mandatory snow removal regulations bring a huge passive demand, making snow removal products not "optional consumer goods" but "low-frequency essential goods".

Taking the United States as an example, according to data such as FHWA, more than 70% of urban roads in the United States are located in snow areas, and single-family houses account for a large proportion of the housing types of the local population. Among them, in 2021 alone, among the total of about 120 million houses, single-family houses exceeded 80 million. Every cold winter, homeowners have the need to clear the snow in the area in front of their houses.

However, snow removal is a dangerous and heavy physical labor. In extreme weather of minus 10 to 30 degrees, users need to complete the snow removal work with equipment that weighs hundreds of kilograms within a limited time, with a great potential safety hazard. In the fifteen years from 2003 to 2018 alone, more than 90,000 people went to the medical emergency due to snow removal. At the same time, the low-temperature environment will also increase the risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, injuries and even death.

In response to the above pain points, "Hanyang Technology Yarbo" has undergone multiple product iterations, independently developed hardware modules and software algorithm technologies, and proposed a 1 + N host and multi-module design to solve the cleaning problems of courtyard snow removal and snow collection in extreme environments from aspects such as positioning perception, slope climbing and obstacle avoidance, complex terrain adaptation to high power and high endurance.

Yarbo S1 (Image Source / Hanyang Technology)

Take the second-generation Yarbo courtyard robot Yarbo S1 released last year as an example. It is equipped with 6 camera modules in three different directions on the machine itself, and high-precision dual-antenna differential positioning RTK; the base station is plug-and-play and does not require calibration. In terms of snow removal capacity, Yarbo S1 adopts a two-stage snow removal structure, which can clear snow that is 12 inches and about 30 centimeters thick, and easily handle different types of snow such as dry snow, wet snow, and hard snow, and the snow throwing distance can reach 12 meters.

To solve the endurance problem in an ultra-low temperature environment, the team has developed a wireless charging pad, which is also the only high-power 600W charging pad that can be used in outdoor high and low temperature environments. In the absence of a signal, Yarbo S1 can automatically return to the charging pile without human intervention, and the working time after a single charge can reach 90 minutes, corresponding to a cleaning area of more than 550 square meters.

Currently, the Yarbo courtyard robot supports snow removal, lawn mowing, leaf blowing, and Smart Cover modules, accelerating the extension from a single scene to more application possibilities in the courtyard. It can remove snow in winter, mow the lawn in summer, and blow leaves in autumn. Yarbo is currently equipped with a variety of accessories and can be used throughout the year.

For example, its lawn mower robot Yarbo M1 is positioned for medium and large courtyards and can freely shuttle in the front and back yard terrain with a pitch angle of 30 degrees and a horizontal angle of 15 degrees, with a maximum operating area of 6 acres.

Yarbo M1 (Image Source / Hanyang Technology)

Huang Yang, the founder, told HardcoreTech, "Yarbo products have been used by users for several years to solve courtyard problems such as snow removal for users. This hundreds of millions of yuan financing can better support Yarbo in attracting high-quality talents, accelerating product iterations, and also provides a strong support for our good commercial liquidity."

In the future, Yarbo will continue to launch modules such as salt spreading, fertilizing, and picking. On the basis of not changing the overall architecture, it will expand from the existing "1 + 3" to the real "1 + N" direction, so that the robot can better meet the courtyard life needs of different users in different seasons and scenarios.