A lawn mowing robot company that has raised over 100 million yuan secures hundreds of millions of yuan in orders, targeting garden embodied terminals | First exclusive report from Hardcore Kr

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

Yingke learned that the intelligent garden robot company "Changyao Innovation" recently completed a tens of millions of yuan Series A+ financing. The leading investor is Infore Environment, a listed company under the Midea Group, and the old shareholder XGROUP continued to increase its 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 focused 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 - fledged intelligent garden ecosystem around the lawn maintenance scenario.

According to reports from Euromonitor and others, 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, where the lawn area of households is large and the terrain is complex, 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 Yingke, "Users don't just want a lawn mower that can move; they want a beautiful lawn. The best way to break through the competition is to continuously innovate and create better products. The industry leader often wins by large - scale cost advantages, while the second - place company defeats competitors through product and channel differentiation."

This concept is fully reflected 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 movement modes such as in - place rotation, lateral translation, and diagonal movement, effectively dealing with the movement dead angles that traditional lawn mowing robots struggle to overcome, and completely solving the problems of grass grinding, edge dead angles, and getting out of trouble in complex lawn scenarios. This breakthrough innovation introduces the complex chassis solution from the automotive field into the robot industry for the first time.

Tron series lawn mowing robots avoid grass grinding at the boundaries (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 - shredding 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 focused on building offline professional channels in Europe and North America, including regional garden equipment specialty stores and gardening supplies chain networks, to form a relatively stable shipment expectation.

Yingke learned that as of now, Changyao Innovation's offline channel orders 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 tens of millions of yuan in intended orders.

Tron series lawn mowing robots (Source/Enterprise)

Currently, the garden robot track is undergoing 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 are still focusing on the continuous iteration of wheeled chassis and single lawn - mowing functions, Changyao Innovation has chosen 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 comprehensively manage the entire garden space," Hu Yue said. "There are many tasks in the garden, and our goal is not just the lawn - mowing scenario. We will use a brand - new form different from all current wheeled chassis designs to launch a consumer - grade embodied terminal in the gardening industry for the first time, changing the pattern of the garden and reshaping the 'second living room' lifestyle in Europe and America."

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

Yingke: 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 stable foundation. Although the US market has started to grow slowly this year, the overall growth rate is still relatively slow, which is also a problem that the entire industry is currently working hard to solve. Many brands seem to have entered the online channels of large - scale supermarkets in North America, but most of them are still in the initial stage of brand exposure and user awareness building.

According to our actual observations, the stereotype of Chinese hardware brands going global among American users is still deeply ingrained. They generally believe that Chinese products are just affordable alternatives, and the high - end and brand - oriented awareness is still in the process of being established.

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 has a similar starting point, 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)

Yingke: There is a lot of talk 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 stuck in shallow involution: they all rush to pile up technologies, compete on parameters, and engage in price wars. They start involution too early and too superficially, competing in the surface - level red ocean, but are reluctant to 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 are willing to deeply explore the deep - seated user pain points such as lawn maintenance, grass - shredding and returning to the field, and water - saving irrigation. More notably, the entry strategies 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, rarely taking the initiative to conduct frontier exploration. Small start - up companies are also restricted by funds and resources and are similarly unable to support in - depth R & D. As a result, everyone is competing 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 implemented business model for commercial intelligent lawn mowing. Although some teams are trying, it is far from the large - scale stage. Moreover, the channels, R & D, and after - sales services for commercial and household use follow two completely different logics and require separate teams to be established. Based on these judgments, we will not focus on the commercial direction for the time being.

Yingke: Your positioning is far more than just a lawn mowing robot company. What are your ideas for the ecological layout of Changyao?

Hu Yue: The underlying logic of our thinking has never been to produce a bunch of isolated hardware products. What Changyao wants to build is a garden life form that can self - evolve and have full - domain perception.

Using 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, gradually forming a cognitive context with semantic understanding ability. But this is just the appearance. The real core will be carried by a terminal robot that completely subverts the current movement mode of the wheeled chassis. It will be the first "embodied terminal" truly implemented 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 garden entrance, where the garden is no longer a workplace for machines, but a "second living room" where humans, the environment, data, and entities co - exist and co - sense.