"AI + Agriculture" Solves Industry Pain Points, "Maimai Technology" Secures Over 100 Million Yuan in Pre-A Round Financing | Exclusive by 36Kr
36Kr learned that "Maimai Technology Group" (hereinafter referred to as "Maimai Technology") has completed a Pre - A round of financing exceeding 100 million yuan, with a post - investment valuation exceeding 1 billion yuan. The round was jointly led by institutions such as Qihong Yuyuan, Xinglian Capital, Spring Light Lane, and Honglian Qiyuan, with some existing shareholders participating in the follow - on investment. The funds from this round of financing will mainly be used for the R & D and innovation of core technologies such as AI agricultural large models and intelligent sensing devices.
According to Li Nan, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Maimai Technology Group, this financing is the largest - scale early - stage financing in the smart agriculture field recently.
Maimai Technology is an artificial intelligence company that takes data, algorithms, and scenarios as its core foundation and "technology + consumption" as its core business model. It transforms traditional agriculture through agricultural production technologies and information technologies such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain. Its headquarters is located in the core area of Zhongguancun, Beijing.
When talking about why he entered the agricultural sector, Li Nan admitted that it stemmed from two heart - wrenching contrasts. When he worked in a large Internet company before, he saw that cutting - edge technologies such as aerospace remote sensing and virtual reality were concentrated in the consumer entertainment field, while the agriculture that supported consumption lagged behind in technology. Later, during a rural survey, he found that over 95% of farmers in rural areas were over 55 years old, and "people under 55 neither liked nor knew how to farm." Agriculture was facing a crisis of "no successors."
Under such an impact, Li Nan entered the agricultural field and spent half a year assembling a so - called "luxury" founding team. Different from traditional agricultural enterprises or pure technology companies, its core team consists of three types of cross - border elites, forming a stable triangular structure of "understanding agriculture, strong in technology, and good at commercialization."
Since 2018, Maimai Technology's business model has been iterating according to industrial needs.
In the first two years, in Li Nan's words, the company was more like an "agricultural technology solution integrator," piecing together various technologies to solve specific problems of farmers, targeting the technical needs of customers. Later, in order to become a technology company that understands the industry best, Maimai Technology completed the innovation of a new model, providing customers with technical capabilities and helping them complete the connection between production and sales.
What really helped Maimai Technology build its moat was the investment in relevant research on artificial intelligence starting in 2021. After several years of exploration, Maimai Technology has successfully built a core foundation of "model + data + scenario" and a complete crop growth model system covering "description, diagnosis, prediction, and decision - making," deeply empowering key links in agricultural planting management and establishing advantages in crop models, data computing power, and in - depth scenario development.
The Super Brain Smart Agriculture Big Data Platform is a digital infrastructure for smart agriculture built by Maimai Technology based on technologies such as the Internet of Things, AI, big data, satellite remote sensing, and blockchain, combined with agricultural professional knowledge and front - line business experience. The platform takes "models, scenarios, and data" as its core elements and realizes the collection, processing, analysis, and application of data across the entire agricultural industry chain through a three - layer architecture (information perception layer, data processing layer, and intelligent analysis layer), providing data empowerment for the entire process of agricultural production, circulation, and sales.
According to Li Nan, the "crop large model" developed by Maimai Technology is not a "simplified version" of a general large model, but a "coupled system of small models" focusing on vertical scenarios, which can accurately solve specific industrial problems. For example, a vertical model can only solve the problem of peach planting in Central China, while different models are needed for plum and cherry planting in East China.
As of now, Maimai Technology has completed the R & D of nearly a thousand vertical scenario models for 15 major categories and over 200 sub - categories of staple food crops such as wheat and rice and cash crops such as strawberries and blueberries. It has also deployed multi - point data collection in places such as Beijing, Jingmen in Hubei, Chongqing, and Hainan for model verification and optimization.
The value of technology ultimately needs to be verified by industrial results. A citrus - growing customer in Hubei previously faced three major pain points: a high proportion of blemished fruits, which prevented them from entering supermarkets; a low percentage of large fruits, resulting in low selling prices; and insufficient sugar content, making the fruits less competitive in taste. After analysis, the Maimai Technology team took "water" as the core regulatory factor and quantified two key dimensions through the model: one is the water environment (drought duration, air humidity, soil moisture), and the other is the crop's water demand pattern (upper and lower limits of water demand at different growth stages).
After four years of practical application, the results are remarkable: the blemished fruit rate has dropped to less than 5%, the large - fruit rate has stabilized above 85%, and the sugar content has increased by 2.5 - 2.7 units, ultimately helping the customer successfully enter some high - end supermarket channels.
Taking a large blueberry model in Yunnan as an example, based on in - depth analysis of the blueberry crop mechanism, Maimai Technology scientifically demonstrated the natural environment in Mengzi and established a comprehensive blueberry model system, including environment simulation and optimization models, soil water and fertilizer simulation and optimization models, etc. Eventually, the application of the crop growth model helped increase the blueberry yield by up to 30%.
In the strawberry - planting large model, Maimai Technology combines its self - developed crop growth model with agricultural Internet of Things technology. Through the intelligent collection and analysis of strawberry - planting environment data, it can make accurate decisions on environmental parameters such as light, temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide in the strawberry - planting environment. Practical data shows that the application of the strawberry growth model can shorten the strawberry growth cycle by 10% and increase the yield by 20%.
In terms of R & D, Maimai Technology has two core R & D institutions: the National R & D Center and the Agricultural Industry Research Institute. The National R & D Center has assembled 7 national - level expert teams and has a professional R & D team of 270 people, focusing on the R & D of hard technologies such as drones, automated equipment, and visual recognition technology, covering the entire chain of technological breakthroughs in agricultural artificial intelligence. The Agricultural Industry Research Institute focuses on research at agricultural bases, specifically studying crop growth mechanisms and product optimization, and is committed to breakthroughs in cutting - edge technologies such as large crop growth models.
In terms of technology accumulation, Maimai Technology holds over 120 patents and software copyrights related to smart agriculture and has served over 170 Fortune 500 - level customers in China. On the production side, it is deeply involved in the technology and production guidance of over 70 modern digital farms, with a total production capacity exceeding 10 billion yuan; it has established ecological cooperation with over 190 modern digital farms, with a total production capacity exceeding 18 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the company has had positive audited net profits for six consecutive years, and its revenue growth rate has remained above 200% for many years. Currently, the company has initiated the planning for a Series A round of financing and has clearly set the strategic goal of officially striving for an IPO in 2027. In the future, it will continue to achieve exponential growth in revenue and profit driven by technology.