A lawn mowing robot company that has raised over 100 million yuan secures hundreds of millions of yuan in orders, targeting garden embodied terminals | Exclusive report by Yingke

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

Hard Kr has learned that the intelligent garden robot company "Changyao Innovation" recently completed a tens of millions of yuan Series A+ financing. The leading investor is Yingfeng Environment, a listed company under the Midea Group, and the old shareholders continued to increase their investment. The funds will be mainly invested in technological R & D iteration, mass production and delivery of multiple SKUs, and expansion of the product matrix. The company will continue to strengthen its supply chain capabilities and improve its global channel layout. Previously, the company completed its Series A financing in December 2025, and the cumulative financing amount in half a year exceeded 100 million yuan.

Changyao Innovation was founded in 2022 and has long been focusing on the outdoor garden intelligent hardware track, concentrating on the R & D, design, and manufacturing of boundary - free lawn mowing robots. Relying on its independent technological R & D and scenario - based innovation capabilities, the company builds a full intelligent ecosystem for gardens around the lawn maintenance scenario.

According to reports from Euromonitor and other sources, in 2024, the global sales of lawn mowing robots accounted for 9.1% of the total lawn mower sales, which is at a relatively low level. Looking at different regions, the stock penetration rate in the European market reaches 20% - 30%, with a relatively high popularity rate, but there is still a vast space for the replacement of boundary - free products; in North America, the lawn area of households is large and the terrain is complex, and the penetration rate is less than 2%, making it a key market for future expansion.

As the garden robot market continues to heat up, the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Facing the increasingly homogeneous price war and function stacking, behind the market differentiation is that the existing product capabilities are difficult to meet the deep - seated needs of users. Hu Yue, the founder of Changyao Innovation, told Hard Kr, "Users don't just want a lawn mower that can move, but a beautiful lawn. The best way to break through the competition is to keep innovating and create better products. The industry leader often wins by large - scale cost, while the second - place company defeats competitors through product and channel differentiation."

This idea is fully verified in the latest flagship product of Changyao Innovation, the Tron Ultra series of lawn mowing robots.

The Tron Ultra series is equipped with the industry's first four - wheel independent drive and independent steering system, allowing each wheel to rotate independently at any angle. This enables the robot to achieve complex motion modes such as in - place rotation, lateral translation, and diagonal movement, effectively coping with the motion dead angles that traditional lawn mowing robots can hardly overcome, and completely solving the problems of grass grinding, edge dead angles, and difficulty in getting out in complex lawn scenarios. This breakthrough innovation introduces the complex chassis solution in the automotive field into the robot industry for the first time.

Tron series lawn mowing robots avoid boundary grass grinding (Source/Enterprise)

In terms of engineering implementation, to balance compact space, off - road passability, reliability, and cost, the R & D team of Changyao Innovation self - developed an integrated design of the in - wheel motor and the independent steering knuckle, eliminating the traditional mechanical steering tie - rod and significantly reducing the number of moving parts. Combined with the upgraded AI visual navigation system and the original grass - crushing module, the response speed, failure rate, and maintenance cost of the whole machine have been significantly optimized.

Currently, the Tron Ultra series has completed R & D and engineering verification and will officially start global sales in the middle of this year. Changyao Innovation said that it will continue to use "product differentiation × channel differentiation" as the dual engines to establish a clear brand awareness in the mid - to - high - end lawn mowing robot market.

In addition to online channels, Changyao has long been focusing on building offline professional channels in Europe and North America, including regional garden equipment franchise stores and gardening product chain networks, to form a relatively stable shipment forecast.

Hard Kr has learned that as of now, the offline channel orders of Changyao Innovation in Europe have increased by more than five times compared with the same period last year, and the new lawn mowing robot products have received hundreds of millions of yuan in intended orders.

Tron series lawn mowing robots (Source/Enterprise)

Currently, the garden robot track is experiencing a paradigm shift from "single - function tools" to "scenario - based platforms". From hardware iteration to ecosystem construction, Changyao Innovation's imagination of the garden goes far beyond lawn mowing.

While some manufacturers still focus on the continuous iteration of wheeled chassis and single lawn mowing function, Changyao Innovation chooses a different path. "When the technical barriers of single functions and scenarios are gradually diluted by the maturity of the supply chain, users need an intelligent system that can coordinate and manage the entire garden space." Hu Yue said, "There are many tasks in the garden. What we do is not just the lawn mowing scenario. We will use a new form different from all current wheeled chassis designs to launch a consumer - grade embodied terminal in the gardening industry for the first time, change the pattern of the garden, and reshape the 'second living room' lifestyle in Europe and America."

The following is an excerpt from the interview between Hard Kr and Hu Yue, the founder of Changyao Innovation (slightly edited):

Hard Kr: Currently, Europe is still the main market. Has the US market started to gain momentum in the past six months?

Hu Yue: The European market has a solid foundation. Although the US market has started to grow slowly this year, the overall growth rate is still relatively slow, which is also a common problem that the entire industry is currently tackling. Many brands seem to have entered the online channels of large - scale supermarkets in North America, but currently, they are still mostly in the stage of brand exposure and initial establishment of user awareness.

According to our actual observation, the stereotypes of Chinese hardware brands going global among American users are still deeply ingrained. They generally believe that Chinese products are just affordable alternatives, and the high - end and branded awareness is still in the establishment stage.

This also means that in the eyes of overseas users, most Chinese hardware companies are actually on the same starting line - even large domestic companies have a very low recognition among ordinary American consumers, which is seriously inconsistent with their scale. The advantage is that everyone is on a similar starting line, but the disadvantage is that the label of "cheap and low - end" is difficult to remove in the short term.

Tron series lawn mowing robots (Source/Enterprise)

Hard Kr: There is a lot of noise about the "involution" in the domestic lawn mowing robot track. How do you judge the current competitive stage of the industry?

Hu Yue: Currently, the industry has entered the elimination stage, far from the initial warm - up stage. It places extremely high requirements on the comprehensive strength of enterprises, supply chain management, local services, and the establishment of a global sales network. However, many players are still in shallow involution: they flock to pile up technologies, compete on parameters, and engage in price wars. They start involuting too early and too superficially, fighting in the surface red ocean, but are reluctant to deeply explore the blue ocean scenarios.

Serious product homogenization is also a common problem in the industry. Most products only stay at the basic lawn mowing function, and few people deeply explore the deep - seated user pain points such as lawn maintenance, grass - crushing and returning to the field, and water - saving irrigation. More notably, the entry ideas of large companies are also relatively conservative - some companies in the industry are used to waiting for three players with clear positioning to emerge in the market before following suit, and rarely take the initiative to conduct frontier exploration. Small start - up companies are also restricted by funds and resources and are difficult to support in - depth R & D. As a result, everyone is involuting on the surface, and no one is digging for opportunities in the deep sea.

In terms of scenario exploration, there is currently no mature and landed business model for commercial intelligent lawn mowing. Although some teams are trying, it is far from the large - scale stage. Moreover, commercial and household use have two completely different logics in channels, R & D, and after - sales, and separate teams need to be established. Based on these judgments, we will not focus on the commercial direction for the time being.

Hard Kr: Your positioning is far more than just a lawn mowing robot company. What are Changyao's ideas for ecological layout?

Hu Yue: The underlying logic we think about is never to make a bunch of isolated hardware products. What Changyao wants to build is a garden life form that can self - evolve and have all - round perception.

Taking the lawn mowing robot as the entry point for perception and interaction, we continuously accumulate environmental data of the garden scenario, user behavior trajectories, and implicit models of plant growth, and gradually form a cognitive context with semantic understanding ability. But this is only the appearance. The real core will be carried by a terminal robot that completely subverts the current wheeled chassis movement mode - it will be the first truly landed "embodied terminal" in the garden consumer - grade scenario in the industry, a physical interface that connects the physical world and digital perception.

Changyao's evolution path is clear and far - reaching: in the short term, focus on the ultimate implementation of single - product hardware; in the long term, accelerate the weaving of an invisible network in the deep dimensions of the garden ecosystem and embodied intelligence. What we want is not a tool, but a high - barrier intelligent entrance to the garden - where the garden is no longer a workplace for machines, but a "second living room" where people, the environment, data, and entities coexist and interact.