Xinhe Robotics (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd., a maker of specialized robots for grain storage, has closed a first funding round worth tens of millions of yuan. The investor is Shenzhen Hi-Tech Investment, a state-owned financial services institution under the Shenzhen municipal government.

The company said the proceeds will go mainly toward R&D, capacity expansion and scaling its deployments across grain depots nationwide. It also plans to validate new use cases such as cargo ship holds and to explore overseas markets.

Targeting Grain Storage, Tackling High-Risk Work

Xinhe Robotics was among the first Chinese companies to focus intelligent robotics on grain storage. Its core team has worked on grain storage robotics systems for years and developed an intelligent grain-leveling robot jointly with Sinograin's Chengdu Grain Storage Research Institute.

Traditional grain-leveling work is carried out in sealed, dust-heavy environments with fire and explosion risks. Loose grain surfaces can collapse, the labor is physically punishing, and mechanical equipment often damages the grain.

To address those pain points, Xinhe Robotics built an intelligent grain-surface leveling system centered on an explosion-proof, fumigation-resistant leveling robot, shifting storage operations from manual labor to robot fleets.

Robot Fleets Lift Productivity

According to the company, rough leveling of a grain surface used to require five to seven workers laboring for five straight days. With multiple robots working in coordination, the same job now takes a single day.

On quality, the system achieves zero damage to grain kernels and keeps height variation across the grain surface within 20 centimeters, raising efficiency while reducing the need for workers to enter high-risk environments.

Unlike general-purpose robotics companies still searching for viable applications, Xinhe Robotics started from a clearly defined need in grain storage and has already cleared both technical and market validation, giving it a basis for product standardization and scaled replication.

The company is now extending into ports and bulk grain handling in ship holds.

From Single Machines to the Digital Grain Depot

Xinhe Robotics plans to treat grain storage as its core business, speeding up the rollout of proven products across different types of depots while gradually building a digital grain depot system that links space, air, ground, storage and people.

The company intends to expand into depot-wide inspection, drone and ground robot coordination, multi-robot scheduling, intelligent monitoring of grain conditions, risk alerts and predictive maintenance.

On the business model, Xinhe Robotics wants to combine intelligent hardware, a software platform and ongoing maintenance into a single service package, moving from supplier of individual smart machines to provider of end-to-end intelligent solutions for grain storage and bulk grain transport.

As the grain storage industry accelerates its digital overhaul, specialized robots are expected to take on a larger role in leveling, inspection, monitoring and transport, pushing traditional depots toward automation and intelligence.