Yimo Technology Closes Series A of Over 100 Million RMB, Offering Large-Scale New Energy Intelligent Mining Trucks | BlueRun Ventures

Large-scale new energy intelligent mining truck company Yimo Technology recently completed an A round of financing exceeding RMB 100 million, led by existing investor Vertex Ventures China, with Orient Capital participating. The proceeds will fund continued R&D on Yimo's large-scale intelligent mining truck chassis, control systems, and intelligent systems, as well as the development, manufacturing, and testing of the EM165 and EM185 models.

BlueRun Ventures led Yimo Technology's angel round.

A BlueRun Ventures project lead said: "BlueRun has long been bullish on the electrification of commercial vehicles and construction machinery, particularly in mining scenarios where demand for safety and automation is rising markedly. Through its strong clean-sheet design capabilities, the Yimo team successfully developed and validated large-scale intelligent electric mining equipment over the past year and a half, while also making extremely rapid commercial progress. As Yimo's angel round investor, BlueRun is highly optimistic and confident that the team will seize market opportunities and build Yimo into a leading engineering equipment enterprise in the electrification era."

Founded in August 2021, Yimo Technology is a new energy intelligent construction machinery company that provides large-scale new energy intelligent construction machinery products and transportation services to global mining customers. Its main products are large-scale new energy intelligent mining trucks suitable for non-road enclosed transportation scenarios including mines, ports, and major construction projects.

In the first half of 2022, Yimo Technology announced it had raised tens of millions of RMB in angel funding and independently developed China's first fully domestic 200-ton-class giant intelligent mining truck, the EM200, breaking the foreign industry giants' technological monopoly on high-end products. Domestic peers' products have primarily been wide-body dump trucks below 105 tons.

Yimo's 200-ton-class EM200 series successfully completed industrial testing

Commitment to Independent R&D

Breaking Foreign Giants' Technological Monopoly

With the rapid development of the new energy industry, demand for metal ores continues to grow. Meanwhile, coal remains a cornerstone of energy supply, with stable extraction volumes. Conservative estimates put China's annual earthwork transportation market for mining areas at no less than RMB 200 billion. The market was previously dominated by 40-ton highway trucks, but in recent years wide-body dump trucks have been rapidly displacing them.

Yimo Technology founder and CEO Huakun Zhang explained that domestic wide-body dump truck sales exceeded 20,000 units in 2021, including roughly 3,000 exports. By 2022, domestic sales had reached approximately 30,000 units with about 8,000 exports — rapid growth. With underlying technological shifts in new energy electric drive and intelligent connected equipment, the construction machinery sector may well give rise to new enterprises.

Large-scale, electric, and autonomous are the development trends for mining dump trucks, and industry players have made some progress in all three areas. Yimo Technology is focusing on "large-scale" and "electric," using new energy and intelligent means to achieve breakthroughs and transformation in these dimensions. The company has multiple off-road large-scale wide-body vehicle products at 165-ton class and above.

Yimo wide-body mining truck products

Typically, a million-ton-class open-pit coal mine's extraction and earthwork stripping operations require dozens of work sites, each with one excavator paired with 4–6 wide-body dump trucks. The larger the vehicle payload, the greater the single-trip transport volume and output — or with equivalent output, fewer vehicles and lower density are needed, saving drivers and improving efficiency. This is the clear advantage of vehicle large-scaling. Industry players are now pursuing large-scaling through various approaches.

Currently, mainstream domestic wide-body dump trucks in mining areas are below 105 tons total weight, meaning rated loads not exceeding 70 tons. Some state-owned large mines use imported rigid-frame trucks above 100-ton payload, but these are extremely expensive with long spare parts lead times and very high maintenance costs. SANY Heavy Industry and North Hauler also have rigid-frame trucks above 100 tons, but core components rely mainly on imports with pricing similar to imported products.

Mining area roads are inherently poor — many curves, steep grades, difficult acceleration, and safety speed limits — placing high demands on vehicle stability. The challenge of large-scaling is that the vehicle body requires correspondingly scaled chassis and power systems, and chassis and power system large-scaling has long been constrained by imported components, with key technologies controlled by foreign suppliers.

Current wide-body dump trucks use a 6×4 chassis based on fuel drive, still employing the conventional "engine + transmission + axle" configuration; oil-to-electric conversion products have chassis identical to fuel vehicles with no payload breakthrough.

Combining New Energy and Intelligent Means

Driving Electrification Transformation

Yimo Technology independently designed its chassis, employing multi-power drive modules and multi-axle distributed drive technology, breaking free from the traditional single engine + transmission + axle constraints and overcoming powertrain limitations. Additionally, the company uses electro-hydraulic coordinated steering technology, improving load-bearing and drive compatibility through multi-axle coordination while controlling turning radius and enhancing drivability and safety. Furthermore, Yimo Technology's electronic-electrical architecture capable of supporting multiple devices provides a foundation for intelligence, supporting more comprehensive information systems, diverse I/O, multi-layered control algorithms, and greater computing power and data flow.

On electrification, Yimo Technology's same model products can select different hybrid power systems and energy supply methods. The same vehicle can accommodate oil-electric hybrid, hydrogen-oil hybrid, pure electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and other power supply methods. This is because different mining areas in different regions have different inherent energy advantages, making different energy supply methods more suitable — Xinjiang, for example, is better suited to methanol feedstock.

On energy technology pathways, Yimo Technology has developed and completed industrial testing of pure electric + fuel range-extender mining trucks. In founder and CEO Huakun Zhang's view, hybrid is the most realistic technology pathway at this stage. Mining area electrical infrastructure is uneven, and the vast majority of open-pit mines lack charging facilities, unable to support large-scale pure electric vehicle deployment. But mining areas are production environments, and any new technology or product application cannot affect existing production efficiency. Therefore, starting from present scenarios, using hybrid strategies supplemented by regenerative braking and other technologies enables "charge when there's electricity, burn fuel when there isn't," allowing new products to suit any scenario. While ensuring efficiency, even the purely fuel-burning hybrid version saves 15%–25% fuel consumption compared to fuel vehicles, achieving energy conservation, environmental protection, and cost reduction.

Yimo Technology chose to use domestic supply chains and design mining truck chassis in-house. This allows cost control at more reasonable prices, shortening customer payback periods, while also ensuring subsequent product supply and after-sales maintenance spare parts availability.

The company has successfully completed industrial testing of the EM200 prototype in Inner Mongolia mining areas; the EM165 and EM185 have completed verification and iteration, with design finalized, and are currently in production and assembly at the company's own manufacturing base in Suizhou. After completing pre-delivery debugging, they will proceed to Inner Mongolia mining areas for industrial testing.

Yimo's proprietary factory production and assembly floor

Using Yimo Technology's large-scale intelligent mining trucks can save substantial numbers of drivers and management personnel. With one vehicle's transport capacity greatly increased, required operating vehicles are correspondingly reduced, and output per unit of mining area is significantly improved. Through the vehicle connected data platform, mining area operational efficiency and safety can be enhanced, while providing better underlying technical conditions for subsequent iteration toward unmanned operation.

Yimo Technology's three founders all graduated from Tsinghua University's Department of Automotive Engineering. The core team has spent nearly two decades engaged in mining engineering vehicle and electric vehicle development, production, and sales, with extensive experience in complete vehicle and electric drive system development. The company currently employs approximately 100 people.

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Originating in Silicon Valley, BlueRun Ventures was established in 2005 as a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.

Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion, making it one of the largest early-stage funds domestically. Its investment stage focuses on Pre-A and Series A, covering hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumer, and healthcare, with cumulative investments in over 150 startups including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, CloudSaints Intelligence, Anxin Netshield, and BioMap.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked #1 in Zero2IPO's "China Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions," #1 in ChinaVenture's "China Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and among Preqin's Top 10 global consistently high-return VC fund managers.

Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has received consecutive year recognition from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media institutions for honors including "China Early-Stage Institution of the Year," "China Top Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."