Youbo Aerospace has halved the cost of its vortex-electric engines and launched a new round of financing.
On November 14, 2025, the 27th China Hi-Tech Fair kicked off at the Shenzhen World Exhibition & Convention Center. At the booth of Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology, a small aero turbo-electric engine was surrounded by low-altitude aircraft practitioners. Wang Jun, Director of R&D Department of U-Power Aerospace Propulsion (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., explained its structure on site: the turboshaft engine is connected to a high-power generator through a coupling, and the engine drives the generator to generate power, which can not only supply power to the aircraft drive system, but also power various airborne equipment, making it suitable for high-power, heavy-load aircraft and eVTOL.
A year later, the company behind this machine is pushing forward a new round of financing. Instead of starting with the complete engine, it started with the design and simulation software for turbomachinery, and spent 12 years connecting the through-flow design, core components and complete engine development into a whole line. This path is not fast, but it explains why this 20+ person company can deliver a physical turbo-electric engine.
Power is the most expensive short board in the low-altitude economy
The power routes of eVTOL are roughly divided into three categories at present: pure electric, hybrid range-extended and hydrogen energy. Restricted by the battery energy density, the pure electric solution cannot achieve long range and large load at the same time; the hybrid range-extended solution uses a small turbine engine to generate power to provide continuous power for the aircraft. The latter is regarded by more and more complete aircraft manufacturers as a practical solution for medium and large eVTOL.
The problem lies in the cost. According to previous reports from 36Kr, the average cost of a turboshaft engine is about 10,000 yuan per kilowatt, and a 200kW-class turboshaft engine costs about 2 million yuan, which directly pushes up the price of the complete aircraft. For complete aircraft manufacturers, the power system is not only the upper limit of performance, but also the bottom line of cost. For a long period in the past, there were limited optional models of high-power aero power in China, and small and medium-sized complete aircraft manufacturers often had to make repeated compromises among price, delivery cycle and adaptability during model selection.
The demand has been verified. In April 2026, Aero Engine Corporation of China launched the co-creation initiative for general aviation power industry in Shanghai, whose general aviation power spectrum covers 200kW to 1000kW class turbo-electric systems, targeting manned and unmanned hybrid eVTOL and electric short take-off and landing aircraft; in July 2026, Shanghai Shushi Aviation delivered a 300kW class high-speed direct-drive turbine power generation system to customers. The simultaneous layout of central SOEs and leading private enterprises shows that this track is no longer a concept, but also means that the window is narrowing — the next competition is not about "whether you have the product", but about who iterates faster, costs lower and delivers more stably.
From through-flow design software to complete turbo-electric engine
Founded in 2014, U-Power Aerospace Propulsion was formerly known as Shenzhen U-Power Technology Co., Ltd. Its earliest business was not selling engines, but providing through-flow design and simulation services for turbomachinery. In the company's business scope, aero engines and their key pneumatic components, numerical simulation of fluid mechanics, and turbomachinery blade products are listed side by side, and this arrangement itself explains its starting point.
The transaction value of this business is not large, but it requires a sufficiently in-depth understanding of the internal flow of impellers and blades. Every time the customer revises a version of the pneumatic scheme, the simulation has to be re-run, with many iterations and long cycles. In August 2025, the company registered the software copyright of "Turbomachinery Through-flow Design and Simulation System"; in July of the same year, its patent application for "An Intelligent Design and Simulation System for Through-flow Components of Fluid Machinery" was published, and the abstract mentioned that the scheduling control module is used to manage algorithm path selection and computing resource allocation in the optimization process. The value of such tools is not to draw drawings for customers, but to turn the trial-and-error process that originally relied on engineers' experience into a reusable and convergent calculation process.
The design capability also brings another type of order. In August 2025, the company won the bid for the procurement project of mechanical property analysis and characterization system for automotive parts materials and components of Shenzhen Automotive Research Institute, Beijing Institute of Technology (Shenzhen Research Institute of National Engineering Laboratory for Electric Vehicles), with an amount of 1.832852 million yuan. A team that does aero engine through-flow design sells its testing and characterization capabilities to the automotive materials field, which shows that this set of methods does not only serve a certain model.
The key node at the capital level appeared in December 2023. The company completed a round of financing, with the investor being Harbin Institute of Technology Asset Management Co., Ltd., and the amount was not disclosed. Industrial and commercial information shows that HIT Asset currently holds about 11.99% of the shares, and Yang Xianqing, chairman and general manager of the company, directly holds about 36.97% of the shares. For a company that has been dealing with turbomachinery for a long time, the entry of university assets is not unexpected, but its significance lies more in technical origin and credit endorsement, rather than financial ease.
The core of a turbo-electric engine consists of three parts: gas turbine core engine, high-speed generator and controller. Most start-ups choose to do system integration, purchase components externally, and define the product first; U-Power Aerospace Propulsion chose to develop the components by itself. This road is slower, but once it is passed, the cost structure and iteration rhythm will be completely different.
The public information of the National Intellectual Property Administration records this process. In July 2026, the design patent for "aero turbo-electric engine" applied by the company was authorized, and the purpose column of the patent states that it is "an engine used to provide power and auxiliary power for aircraft such as electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles"; in September 2026, the fork type limited angle magnetic coupler and its working method were published; in November 2026, a multi-modal control motor system and its control method, and a high-speed aero generator were successively granted invention patents. The former involves flexible coupling transmission between the compressor turbine, combustion chamber turbine, reverse turbine and main generator, and the latter's rotor radial magnetic suspension structure is used to reduce the friction loss between the rotating shaft and the bearing. Putting these items together points to the same thing: the company wants to develop turbines, motors, controls and transmissions by itself.
The choice of manufacturing links also affects the cost. According to the report from Aerospace China at the end of 2025, this engine adopts forward R&D, uses independent full 3D pneumatic optimization and SLM metal 3D printing technology, achieves lightweight while its performance is at the international advanced level, and the cost is more than 50% lower than similar international products. 3D printing here is not a concept, but a means to reduce the number of parts, compress assembly processes and shorten the trial production cycle — for an engine that has not yet been finalized, the iteration speed itself is a cost.
According to public roadshow information, this product is positioned as a 300kW-class small aero turbo-electric engine. This power range corresponds to the range-extending demand of medium and large eVTOL and large UAVs, and it also falls in the segment where domestic complete aircraft manufacturers choose the most concentrated and mature domestic models are the most scarce.
After the prototype, the test has just begun
Judging from public information, the progress of U-Power Aerospace Propulsion has been concentrated in the past two years. At the Hi-Tech Fair in November 2025, the turbo-electric engine jointly developed by the company and Shenzhen Institute of Information Technology was exhibited in physical form; in the same month, the company appeared in the exhibitor list of the Asian General Aviation Exhibition held in Zhuhai, with the booth No. H6N0-2, Hall 6; at the end of 2025, Swayro reached a strategic cooperation with U-Power Aerospace Propulsion, and became the designated supplier of the special system for structural support of its small aero turbo-electric engine development project. Before the complete engine is finalized, professional suppliers in the supply chain have begun to allocate resources according to the project, which is an easily ignored signal in the development stage.
Qualification and intellectual property rights constitute another layer of foundation. The company currently has more than 30 patents and more than 20 software copyrights. It was rated as a national high-tech enterprise and a national-level technology-based small and medium-sized enterprise in 2025, selected into the top 100 sci-tech innovative emerging enterprises in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and was rated as a provincial-level specialized, refined and innovative small and medium-sized enterprise in 2023. Its office and R&D site is located in the innovative industrial housing in Huilongpu, Longgang District, Shenzhen, and the company also has a subsidiary in Taizhou. The former is close to the low-altitude economy and electronic supply chain in Shenzhen, while the latter is connected to the manufacturing supporting facilities in the Yangtze River Delta.
But the scale of this company is still very small. Public industrial and commercial information shows that it has more than 20 employees participating in social insurance, and no new financing has been disclosed since 2023. For a team that needs to develop software, components and complete engines at the same time, manpower and capital are not abundant, which means that it must make trade-offs on the product line, and any test failure or delivery delay will be magnified.
In terms of commercialization, U-Power Aerospace Propulsion currently has three possible sources of revenue: design simulation software and technical services, parts processing and testing characterization, and complete engine sales. The first two have already generated orders, and the public records show that its customers include university research institutions and third parties in the automotive materials field; the third depends on when the complete engine is finalized. According to public bidding records, the company has participated in more than 20 projects and won 10 bids, with orders mainly in project-based mode and small single transaction amount. The commercial logic of this path is not complicated: first use the design capability to enter the customer's development process, and then strive for opportunities for components and complete engines.
This also explains the significance of this round of financing. The company has launched a new round of financing, and the specific amount and valuation have not been disclosed to the public. For investors, what really needs to be judged is not "whether the turbo-electric engine has a market", but three more specific nodes: whether the complete engine can complete the test run and present repeatable life and performance data; whether it can sign the first installation verification agreement with a complete aircraft manufacturer; and whether the path to airworthiness or specific field access is clear. The progress of any of these three things is more valuable than a phrase of "reaching the international advanced level".
A prototype can only explain limited things, but the design tools behind the prototype, the proportion of self-developed components and the choice of supply chain are often more worthy of inquiry than the prototype itself. U-Power Aerospace Propulsion has put 12 years of accumulation on a long chain from software to complete engine. Whether this path is correct will be answered in the next one or two years.