A German client has consecutively purchased a drone swarm consisting of 7,000 units, and this Shenzhen-based company is planning to pursue an IPO.

Drone performances are no novelty. What makes the difference is that a Shenzhen-based enterprise has developed a standardized drone cluster system featuring low manual labor input, high repurchase rate and low operating cost.

Turn a single show into a full-fledged system

In the past, to host a drone show of hundreds of units, usually over a dozen staff members had to place, inspect and retrieve each drone one by one, which often took hours. Now, the intelligent vehicle-mounted performance system developed by Dmango can finish the deployment and setup in around 60 seconds.

Getting thousands of drones to take off at the same time is not a simple matter of increasing the number of aircraft. Each individual drone relies on the flight control system to maintain stability, while large-scale cluster flight also involves positioning and navigation, communication synchronization, route planning and unified scheduling, which requires controlling the flight trajectory and spacing of each drone in the constantly changing formation.

In the early days, drones had to be manually placed at designated positions one by one, and take off uniformly after all checks were completed. As the cluster scale expanded from hundreds to thousands or even tens of thousands of units, the workload of ground deployment also increased accordingly.

In 2022, Dmango, a Shenzhen drone enterprise, launched the box-type takeoff and landing system to try to change this operation mode: drones no longer need to be placed manually one by one, and can take off and land directly from the box. After that, Dmango introduced functions such as automatic charging and high-precision autonomous return to the nest into its new-generation products, and launched the intelligent vehicle-mounted system to further reduce on-site manual operations.

From air cluster control to ground automated deployment and retrieval, Dmango has gradually integrated these technologies into a repeatable and deliverable drone cluster system. The focus of its technology iteration has also extended from expanding the flight scale to improving the system automation level and operational efficiency.

This change has particularly high commercial value in overseas markets. For overseas customers with high labor costs, whether the equipment can be deployed quickly and reduce manpower input is directly related to the project operation cost.

At a recent media briefing, Dmango disclosed that system equipment sales currently account for about 70% of the company's revenue. Its overseas business has covered more than 50 countries and regions, and its overseas performance from 2020 to 2025 has increased to about 45 times of the starting point. In addition, the company has begun to try to extend relevant capabilities to new scenarios such as low-level embodied intelligence.

From technology iteration to equipment export

Dmango's technology accumulation dates back to 2015.

At that time, the team started with the drone flight control system, and first solved the problem of stable flight of a single drone. In 2016, the company entered the drone cluster field, and completed the *Red Star Over China* cluster performance with 80 drones in Yudu, Jiangxi.

After that, as the cluster scale expanded, Dmango's R&D gradually turned to more complex cluster control. Early drone performances mainly relied on light combinations to form flat patterns, and later gradually developed performance forms such as three-dimensional shapes and dynamic changes.

This change puts higher requirements on cluster control. Different from the flat patterns arranged according to fixed positions, dynamic three-dimensional performances require a large number of drones to constantly adjust their positions in the air and maintain a safe distance during formation transformation. How to plan the flight trajectory of each drone and reduce the potential collision risk has become a problem that the system needs to solve.

Dmango has thus gradually established a technical system covering flight control, cluster control, route planning, high-precision positioning, ground station and script editor, and continuously improved its communication anti-interference and abnormal handling capabilities.

Technology iteration has also extended from the air to the ground. In the early days, drones needed to be manually placed, inspected and retrieved one by one. According to Dmango's recollection, 1000 drones together with ground equipment usually required about 10 to 12 staff members to participate in related operations. In 2022, Dmango launched the V3 system supporting box-type takeoff and landing, which reduced the dependence on manual placement. The fourth-generation product V4 further realized automatic charging, takeoff and landing at the drone nest, and allowed drones to return to the nest autonomously through higher-precision positioning technology. Previously, the V3 used the camera to assist in returning to the nest, while the V4 no longer needs this auxiliary method.

The company also launched an intelligent vehicle-mounted performance system based on V4, which integrates equipment deployment, debugging, takeoff and retrieval into the vehicle-mounted system. According to the introduction, this system can complete the deployment and setup in about 60 seconds. These improvements not only improve the on-site execution efficiency, but also lower the operation threshold for equipment customers.

For Dmango, technology iteration has gradually shifted from meeting the needs of larger-scale cluster flights to reducing the actual operating costs of customers. This change also supports the company's equipment sales business.

In 2020, Dmango began to sell drone cluster systems overseas, and its first overseas customer came from South Korea. Since then, the company has gradually formed an overseas business model dominated by equipment sales, technical training and execution by local partners.

Different from directly undertaking overseas performance projects, Dmango provides local customers with drone cluster systems, and carries out training on flight execution, system operation and script design, so that customers can carry out business locally. This model reduces the equipment transportation, personnel deployment and time costs involved in cross-border project execution.

For overseas customers, what they purchase is not only drone equipment, but also cluster control software, automated deployment capabilities and subsequent operational support.

In November 2025, a German customer first purchased about 800 drones from Dmango. In early 2026, the customer placed an additional order for about 1,000 drones, and purchased another 5,000 units in July and August of the same year. The cooperation between the two sides further extended to European market agency and local technical services.

The domestic market presents the feature of parallel equipment sales and project operation.

In recent years, the application of drone clusters has gradually extended from festival activities to normalized cultural tourism performances and commercial advertisements. On April 19, 2025, Chongqing launched a normalized drone performance project, with the scale gradually expanding from 2,000 units to 5,000 units, forming an operation mode that combines fixed performances with additional shows on holidays.

According to Dmango, in the about one-year period mentioned at the meeting, the relevant Chongqing projects have attracted a total of about 11 million on-site spectators, and the exposure of relevant content on the official cultural tourism platform reached about 11 billion. As the normalized performances form a continuous public viewing scenario, commercial brands have also begun to participate. Brands such as Changan, Tencent and Mixue Ice City have displayed advertising content through drone formations.

At present, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Yangzhou and other places have successively carried out normalized operations with Dmango.

From cluster control to autonomous operation

As the drone cluster system gradually matures, Dmango has also begun to explore the application of its technical capabilities in more scenarios.

At present, the total number of employees of the company is about 300 to 320, of which R&D personnel account for about 40%. According to the company, its flight control architecture and code, cluster control and related software are all independently developed. The V4 product has realized hardware localization, is compatible with Beidou, GPS, GLONASS and other satellite positioning systems, and about 80% of the relevant supply chain can be found in and around Shenzhen.

In addition to flight control and automated equipment, Dmango is also trying to improve the efficiency of content design through AI. The company currently has a creative design team of more than 30 people, and has developed an AI script editor that supports generating drone performance patterns through text instructions.

According to the introduction, the current AI script editor mainly supports simple performances of 1000 drones or less, which can generate text, flat patterns and some regular three-dimensional shapes, and the generation process takes about ten to twenty minutes. For complex three-dimensional patterns, dynamic shapes and large-scale commercial performances, professional designers are still required to participate.

Dmango believes that the combination of AI script generation and automated equipment is expected to lower the usage threshold of drone performances, and further expand personal consumption scenarios such as birthdays, weddings and anniversaries. The relevant business is still in the stage of exploring the operation model.

At the same time, the company has also begun to extend its existing technical accumulation to industry applications beyond performances.

At this media briefing, Dmango introduced for the first time its second business line of low-altitude cluster embodied intelligence, which plans to develop capabilities such as drone environment perception, autonomous navigation, path planning, obstacle avoidance and multi-drone collaboration to meet the demand for autonomous operation in complex environments.

This direction is obviously different from traditional drone cluster performances. Traditional performances are mainly carried out in pre-surveyed venues that meet flight conditions, and drones complete tasks according to pre-planned routes. However, in environments without GPS signals, low light, narrow or closed spaces, drones need to independently judge and adjust their flight paths according to the real-time environment, and complete corresponding operation tasks.

Dmango believes that the accumulated flight control, cluster control and actual flight experience in the past can provide a technical foundation for the new business, but positioning and navigation, autonomous decision-making and perception payload adaptation in complex environments still require further R&D. The company plans to display the relevant Demo at the end of 2026 or early 2027.

According to the company's disclosure, multiple rounds of financing have been completed in 2026, with investments from a number of investment institutions with state-owned enterprise backgrounds. The current valuation has increased by nearly 10 times compared with that at the time of Series A round, and the company plans to file for IPO in 2027. In addition, the company plans to launch a new round of financing at the end of 2026, and is currently in contact with a number of financial and industrial investment institutions.