Best Drones Companies in China
The 141 best Drones companies in China in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: Beijing Zhonghangzhi Technology.
China's drone sector is moving fast, and if you're trying to map the funding landscape, our directory tracks 141 companies with $1.7B in total disclosed capital. Beijing Zhonghangzhi Technology leads at $459M, followed by Antwork at $319M and United Aircraft Technology at $291M. One unicorn has emerged so far. The global drone market sat at roughly $4.4B in 2020 and is forecast to reach $5.4B by 2027 at a 10.44% CAGR, driven by agriculture, construction and a wave of non-military applications that China has been quietly dominating.
And the sector isn't just about cargo drops. The hot themes this quarter are electronic warfare, autonomous reconnaissance and FPV strike systems, and the headlines are keeping pace. FPV drones hit five Russian air bases in a single operation this month, a signal of how quickly low-cost platforms are reshaping conflict. So where does that leave commercial builders? Honestly, I think it accelerates dual-use R&D across the board. Investors like Baidu Ventures and CoStone Capital are already watching the space closely, and the regulatory environment in China, where civilian airspace rules are tightening, adds a layer of complexity every founder here has to price in.
- IMARC Group
Our analysis of 50 Drones companies
$8.9b in tracked funding; 92% of the stack-profiled cohort runs cloud-native; funding activity peaked in 2025.
Ranked: Best Drones companies in China
| # | Company | Disclosed funding | Last round | Stage | Employees | Founder | Tech stack | Patents & IP focus | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beijing Zhonghangzhi Technology Industrial company that develops drones, helicopters, and other products | $459M | 36 mo ago | Series D | — | Tian Gangyin Founder | — | — | — |
| 2 | Antwork Provider of drone-based delivery solutions | $319M | 43 mo ago | Series B | 40 | Lei Zhang Founder & CEO | — | — | — |
| 3 | United Aircraft Technology Developer of multi-utility drones | $291M | 39 mo ago | Series D | 600 | — | JavaAnimate.cssBootstrap+6 | 18 patents Helicopter main rotor drive mechanisms and control systems | — |
| 4 | XAG Manufacturer of agricultural drones, robots, autopilot consoles, and smart farm systems | $248M | 32 mo ago | Series C | 1,370 | Bin Peng Co-Founder | PHPYouTubeNginx+11 | 4 patents Patents concentrated in computing, sensing & instrumentation | 2 launchs |
| 5 | DJI 🦄 Manufacturer of camera drones, handheld devices, and related lifestyle technology | $105M | 29 mo ago | Series B | 14,000 | Frank Tao Founder & CEO | HubSpot CMS HubZohoGSAP+24 | 10,015 patents UAV flight control, aerial imaging stabilization, and onboard audio/video processing technologies. | 2 launchs |
| 6 | Clobotics Provides drone data management solutions | $84M | 63 mo ago | Series A | 11 | Mads Rasmussen Managing director | WordPressMySQLPHP+18 | — | — |
| 7 | Zero UAV Designs & manufactures UAVs for high quality aerial photography and autopilot systems | $31M | 116 mo ago | Series B | — | Jianjun Yang Founder & CEO | — | 4 patents Redundant UAV flight control systems and gyroscope‑based stabilization hardware | — |
| 8 | Suzhou Extreme Robot Technology Provider of drones having applications in multiple industries | $30M | 61 mo ago | Series C | 200 | — | — | — | — |
| 9 | Zerotech Develops drones for consumer and commercial purposes | $22M | 93 mo ago | Deadpooled | — | Yang Jianjun Founder & CEO | — | — | — |
| 10 | ANNGIC Provider of millimetre-wave radar sensors for monitoring traffic | $21M | 44 mo ago | Series C | 150 | — | — | — | — |
| 11 | Boonray Provides solutions for management of data collected from drones | $15M | 58 mo ago | Series A | 30 | — | — | — | — |
| 12 | Maifei Technology Provider of disease and pest monitoring solutions | $15M | 86 mo ago | Series A | 300 | Gong Huaze Co-Founder | — | — | — |
| 13 | Benewake Developer of commercial LiDAR for Robots | $14M | 31 mo ago | Series C | 200 | — | Animate.cssMicrosoft ASP.NETVue.js+6 | — | — |
| 14 | Simtoo Develops a drone for consumer photography purposes | $14M | 115 mo ago | Deadpooled | — | Aaron Zhang CEO | — | — | — |
| 15 | Wynyard Group Cloud-based integrated cyber forensics and threat analysis solutions | $10M | 111 mo ago | Public | 20 | — | — | — | — |
| 16 | Beehive Technology Develops drones for agricultural spraying, and offers spraying services | $9M | 104 mo ago | Deadpooled | — | Wu Guoning CEO | — | — | — |
| 17 | Generalization Intelligence Custom machine learning solutions for multiple industrial applications | $4M | 96 mo ago | Deadpooled | 4 | MasterPa Founder | — | — | — |
| 18 | Inno Provides unmanned aerial vehicles to industries | $3M | 58 mo ago | Series A | 60 | — | — | — | — |
| 19 | Youweiwei Intelligent Technology Developer of UAVs for industrial applications | $3M | 96 mo ago | Series A | 90 | — | — | — | — |
| 20 | Aheadx Designs & manufactures drones for consumer application | $2M | 7 mo ago | Seed | — | Li Xiaoyu CEO | — | — | — |
| 21 | Ceewa Unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturer | $2M | 109 mo ago | Series A | — | Bob Founder & CEO | — | — | — |
| 22 | Starlogic Intelligent Technology Provider of drone-based aerial data acquisition and analysis services | $1M | 55 mo ago | Series A | 100 | — | — | — | — |
| 23 | Shanghai Fuya Intelligent Technology Developer of UAVs for industrial applications | $1M | 90 mo ago | Deadpooled | — | Cao Yabing CEO | — | — | — |
| 24 | Guangzhou Flying Air Technology Provider of aerial imaging solution | $436K | 90 mo ago | Seed | 15 | — | — | — | — |
| 25 | Flying-Cam Develops drones for multiple commercial applications | $166K | 43 mo ago | Funding Raised | — | — | — | — | — |
Top 12 Drones companies in China
#1
Seed · Beijing, Beijing · founded 2014$2Mraised▾
Aheadx is a Chinese startup company that designs & manufactures consumer drones. Their first product is Transdrone A4, which is named after its ability to fold up into something the size of an A4 piece of paper. This drone features 4000mAh capacity smart battery, auto follow module and comes with a clamshell remote control. The company also sells parts and components to make drones. The company received a seed funding of $2M by Avenue Capital in Aug, 2015
- Oct 2025Seed—
- Aug 2015Seed$2M
#2
Series D · Beijing, Beijing · founded 2012$458.6Mraised▾
Industrial company that develops drones, helicopters, and other products. It also offers rotor blades, controllers, and other custom parts for UAVs.
- Jun 2023Series D$167.8M
- Mar 2023Series D$290.8M
#3
Series C · Tianhe, Guangzhou · founded 2007 · 1370 employees$247.6Mraised▾
Manufacturer of agricultural drones, robots, autopilot consoles, and smart farm systems. The company offers drones for spraying, spreading, field mapping, and logistics. Agricultural rovers are available for plant protection and farm material delivery. The autopilot consoles bring automated steering to tractors. Smart fertigation systems and IoT products extend automation to irrigation and nutrient management.
- Sep 2023Series C—
- Mar 2021Series C$46M
- Nov 2020Series C$181.6M
- Sep 2014Series A$20M
#4
DJI 🦄Series B · Shenzhen, Guangdong Province · founded 2006 · 14000 employees$105Mraised▾
Manufacturer of camera drones, handheld devices, and related lifestyle technology. The company provides tools for capturing images and redefining camera placement. It offers products for filmmaking, agriculture, conservation, and energy infrastructure. The company transforms technology into easy-to-use devices, combining technology with designs.
- Jan 2024Grant (prize money)$33K
- Jan 2019Grant (prize money)$97.4K
- Sep 2015Series B—
- May 2015Series B$75M
#5
Series D · Shenzhen, Guangdong · founded 2014 · 600 employees$290.8Mraised▾
Developer of multi-utility drones. It offers unmanned helicopters for various industrial inspections, logistics, defense, and the oil and gas industry. It also provides drone-based equipment and services.
- Mar 2023Series D$290.8M
#6
Series B · Hangzhou, Zhejiang · founded 2015 · 40 employees$318.7Mraised▾
Provider of drone-based delivery solutions. It provides air freight transportation for cities and includes applications such as the distribution of packages and medical supplies.
- Nov 2022Series B—
- Nov 2021Series B$314M
- May 2018Series A$4.7M
- Jun 2017Series A—
#7
Series C · Beijing, Beijing · founded 2015 · 200 employees$13.8Mraised▾
Benewake develops commercial-scale LiDAR hardware which can be incorporated across Drones, Robotics, and Driverless Automobiles to meet the requirements of auto-avoidance, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), terrain following, and RGBD object recognition. The company hold close to 10 patents in this domain. Benewake R&D core team members come from famous universities: Humboldt University (Germany), Ecole Centrale Marseille (France), University of Orleans (France) and Tsinghua University (China).
- Nov 2023Series C$13.8M
- Dec 2022Series C—
- 2018Series B—
- Feb 2018Series B—
#8
Series A · Shanghai, Shanghai · founded 2016 · 11 employees$83.9Mraised▾
Provides drone data management solutions. It offers drone data acquisition flight services and a cloud-based data analysis and viewing software solution. It also offers IT consulting and data migration services to enterprise clients. It also provides drone-based wind turbine inspection and monitoring solutions.
- Mar 2021Series A$30.9M
- Jan 2020Series A$10M
- Aug 2019Series A$22M
- Aug 2018Series A$11M
#9
Series C · Shenzhen, Guangdong Province · founded 2014 · 150 employees$21.3Mraised▾
Provider of millimetre-wave radar sensors for monitoring traffic. It offers an automotive forward-collision warning system, car lane change assisting system, car crash warning system. It provides a millimetre-wave radar sensor for application in drones, security fields, and traffic monitoring.
- Oct 2022Series C$14M
- Jul 2019Series A—
- Aug 2018Series A$7.3M
#10
Series C · Suzhou, Jiangsu · founded 2016 · 200 employees$30Mraised▾
Suzhou Extreme Robot Technology is a technology company that is engaged in the development and manufacturing of machine vision solutions having applications in the areas of agriculture, power inspection, and rail transportation. The company offers two quadcopter drones that come with an autonomy ranging between 10-20 minutes and features like intelligent route planning, automatic take-off, and landing, one-click return, obstacle avoidance, to name a few. In addition, the company provides a web-based platform that interfaces with drones for processing the collected data to provide users with actionable insights.
- Apr 2021Series C$30M
- Nov 2018Series B—
#11
Series A · Shanghai, Shanghai · founded 2016 · 30 employees$15.4Mraised▾
Provides solutions for management of data collected from drones. It focuses on the development of application software for data collection, analysis, and visualization. It provides complete solutions to help their clients use data for analysis and decision-making. Present use cases for its products and services include government regional supervision, photovoltaic power plant inspection, land measurement.
- Aug 2021Series A—
- Aug 2021Conventional Debt$15.4M
- Jul 2019Seed—
- Jun 2016Seed—
#12
Series B · Beijing, Beijing · founded 2009$30.6Mraised▾
Zero UAV designs, develops, and manufactures unmanned intelligent systems and small UAV systems. Products include flight control and ground station systems for fixed wing, multi-rotor aircraft and helicopters, and UAV platform equipped with equipment for aerial mission. Mainly provides two drones: first id High One, a RTF quadcopter for narrow areas & field aerial photography and the second one is E-EPIC, an octa-copter with camera support to record high quality professional videos. Also provides various industry solutions, including fixed wing, multi-rotor, helicopter, intelligent control technology & ground management software that are suitable for various industrial applications, including defense, mapping, electricity, agriculture, maritime, transportation and video entertainment. Serves government departments, military, research institutes, and universities in China and internationally. In Jan 2016, it launched a consumer drone called Ying in partnership with Tencent that allows users to live stream videos on WeChat or QQ
- Sep 2016Series B$22.5M
- Jan 2015Series A$8.1M
Funding & investor landscape
Notable founders
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Drones coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
How research on Drones & UAVs is moving in China
A read on the academic research around Drones & UAVs — which themes are gaining ground, the institutions and researchers driving them, and how the tone is shifting. Based on 4,374 China-affiliated papers.
- Beihang University181
- Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics156
- National University of Defense Technology148
- Zhejiang University113
- Chinese Academy of Sciences111
- Computer vision3→224
- Object detection2→145
- Reinforcement learning1→111
- Real-time computing4→108
- Feature extraction1→85
- Computer vision2→214
- Real-time computing4→123
- Trajectory1→90
- Motion planning1→89
- Task (project management)1→82
- Key (lock)1→48
- Computer security2→29
- Aeronautics1→18
- Field (mathematics)1→16
- Wireless2→14
Where drones uav is researched across China
Location clusters by institution affiliation — each city's volume, stance tone, and a quick read on its hot topic, what's advancing, the opening opportunity, and the main concern.
Who's filing drones uav patents in China
China drones uav patent filing is accelerating — 19,909 filings from 2,970 assignees (2016–2025), led by SZ DJI Technology, Autel Robotics, Huawei TECH; annual filings 481→1814.
- SZ DJI Technology4551
- Autel Robotics1010
- Huawei TECH552
- Positec Power Tools Suzhou497
- Beijing Xiaomi Mobile Software400
- Guangzhou Xaircraft TECH359
- Baidu Online Network Technology 340
- Beijing Roborock Innovation TECH254
Common questions
Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.