The new cash arrives before a Hong Kong listing in a segment where all three listed peers, Boreton, CiDi and EACON, traded below IPO prices as of September 16.
Tage iDriver, a Chinese developer of driverless haulage systems for open-pit mines, has completed a new funding round of nearly RMB300 million, 36Kr reported on October 20. The company, known in Chinese as 踏歌智行, filed for a Hong Kong main-board listing on May 20, and 36Kr suggested that, given typical listing timelines, this may be its last private round before the IPO.
36Kr did not name the investors, the round’s letter or a valuation, and the company has not publicly announced the round. Its May filing named Huatai International as sole sponsor.
The round adds to roughly RMB1.5 billion that Tage iDriver raised from its Pre-A through D rounds before filing, according to a report by the Economic Observer republished by Tencent News. Its backers include a low-carbon fund under China Energy Investment, Hefei’s state-asset regulator and Boton Technology.
Revenue more than tripled in 2025, but losses remain large
Figures from the company’s filing, as reported by Beijing News, show revenue of RMB190 million in 2023, RMB152 million in 2024 and RMB527 million in 2025. Net losses were RMB313 million, RMB345 million and RMB164 million over the same years, more than RMB820 million in total. Gross margin turned positive in 2025 at 4.8%, after negative margins of 24.8% and 45.5% in the two previous years.
The company’s balance sheet was under strain before the filing. Cash fell to RMB2.855 million at the end of 2024, and investor buyback rights, triggered if the company failed to list by the end of 2025, put current liabilities at RMB1.054 billion, Beijing News reported. Company-level redemption rights ended in late 2025, but rights against the founder are only suspended during the application and would revive if it were rejected or withdrawn.
Its customer base is concentrated, 36Kr reported in May. Tage iDriver’s top five customers accounted for 88.2% of its 2025 revenue, and the largest alone for 40.5%. Named customers include China Energy Investment, State Power Investment, Baotou Steel and Jiangxi Copper, some of which are also linked to shareholders.
A Beihang spin-off ranks third behind two listed rivals
Tage iDriver was founded in 2016 by Yu Guizhen, a professor at Beihang University who serves as chairman and co-chief executive. By the end of 2025 it had delivered or serviced 557 driverless mining trucks, including 114 rigid haul trucks, across 31 projects in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Jiangxi, Guangdong and Heilongjiang, 36Kr reported. Its flagship is the TG136HA, a 100-tonne hybrid unmanned truck.
Market leader EACON is far larger: it had 2,580 active autonomous mining trucks deployed in China at the end of 2025 and listed in Hong Kong on July 8 at HK$87.92 a share, Zhitong Finance reported. By revenue, Tage iDriver ranked third in China’s mine autonomous-driving market in 2025 with a 13.3% share, behind companies the filing labels A and B with 38.1% and 21.0%, according to China Insights Consultancy data cited in the filing. The Economic Observer identified the two leaders as EACON and CiDi.
Policy is supporting demand. China’s National Mine Safety Administration has set a target for intelligent equipment to account for at least 60% of capacity in 2026, Wallstreetcn reported. The same outlet noted that the sector is becoming crowded.
Regulators and the market will set the listing’s terms
The China Securities Regulatory Commission asked Tage iDriver 13 supplementary questions on its overseas listing filing in September, the most of nine companies in that batch, Sing Tao reported in a story republished by Sina Finance. The questions covered share-transfer pricing, the sources of outside investors’ funds and a pending lawsuit. One transfer from an employee platform priced shares at RMB11.72, about a fifth of the RMB59.50 paid in a December 2025 round.
Sing Tao also reported that the three listed peers, Boreton, CiDi and EACON, were all trading below their IPO prices as of September 16. Tage iDriver did not respond to Sing Tao’s request for comment.
The next step to watch is whether the company clears the regulator’s review and refreshes its Hong Kong application, and at what valuation the new RMB300 million round was priced, a figure that would anchor any IPO range.