Suiqing Robot, a Chinese mining robotics startup, has closed a tens-of-millions yuan angel round led by Lianyungang Jinqiao Fund, the company announced recently. The funds will be used for engineering iterations of its core underground mining robots, supply chain development, and team expansion.
Founded in early 2025, Suiqing has accumulated nearly two years of technology and underground validation through a subsidiary. The core team, averaging over a decade of experience, includes founder Wang Long, a Tongji University robotics PhD and former Hong Kong University of Science and Technology researcher who previously pioneered construction robotics.
Targeting a Structural Blue Ocean
While most mining robotics startups focus on core operations like excavation and transport, Suiqing deliberately chose auxiliary tasks: tunnel material transport, aerial work, sealing wall construction, and coal dust removal. The logic is straightforward: large excavation and transport equipment is already dominated by established players, making entry extremely difficult. Meanwhile, auxiliary tasks involve over 60% of underground frontline workers—about one million across nearly a thousand large and medium-sized mines in China—precisely the target of national mine safety regulations aimed at reducing headcount. Traditional coal machinery firms have invested little in this area, and external tech companies struggle with high certification barriers and harsh environments.
Wang Long calls this a "structural opportunity where giants haven't done well, tech companies can't enter, and headcount reduction offers maximum value."
Technical Challenges and Self-Developed Solutions
Underground coal mines combine extreme conditions: high gas, high temperature and humidity, low light, narrow spaces, and heavy dust. A hidden challenge is that core components must pass coal safety (MA) certification, but the supply chain for certified servo motors, sensors, and joint modules is extremely limited. Without these, even mature algorithms are useless.
Suiqing took a dual-track approach. On hardware, it self-developed explosion-proof modules—not for novelty, but because MA-certified, suitable components for auxiliary robots are so scarce that without self-development, even prototypes are impossible. On algorithms, it rebuilt general perception solutions for low-light, high-dust, narrow tunnels.
But these are just entry tickets. Suiqing's real moat comes from repeated underground testing, disassembly, and problem-solving in real mines—accumulating a "feel" for which parameters drift on-site, which structures fail within three months in coal dust, and how to handle robot slippage on slopes. Latecomers can buy the same motors or poach algorithm engineers, but not this hard-earned, on-site experience.
Product Pipeline and Go-to-Market Strategy
Suiqing has planned six products. Two—an underground auxiliary transport robot and an aerial work robot—have received small-batch orders and are in the final stage of MA certification. Two others—a sealing wall construction robot and a mining truck tire safety handling robot—fill industry gaps as China's first such units. The sealing wall robot targets a high-accident task in coal mines, while the tire robot serves open-pit mines. Both have completed pilot testing and are expected to receive certification in the second half of 2026.
The company employs a phased "lawnmower strategy": the first two products act as "tunnel entrants," quickly penetrating top mining companies' procurement lists with high cost-performance, building trust in reliability and delivery. The two "first-of-a-kind" products are "profit harvesters."
Suiqing has already secured over 10 million yuan in orders from major state-owned energy and mining enterprises. It has established a deep strategic partnership with China Coal Technology and Engineering Group (CCTEG), which leads mining robot standard-setting and is the sole national authority for MA certification, providing critical support in certification efficiency and market access.
Future Roadmap and Investor Perspective
Suiqing's three-step plan: within two years, complete certification and batch delivery of all six products, establishing a first-mover advantage in underground auxiliary operations; in three to five years, expand horizontally to non-coal mine auxiliary operations, covering underground and open-pit, coal and non-coal mines; in five to seven years, extend its explosion-proof and extreme-environment capabilities to petrochemical explosion-proof operations and urban underground spaces (utility tunnels, underground logistics).
Wang Long believes that coal mines are the ultimate "technology touchstone" for extreme environments—robots that work reliably in high-gas, high-dust, narrow spaces can naturally migrate to easier scenarios like petrochemical plants and underground spaces. This path is unique: the current explosion-proof robot market is strong in inspection but weak in operations, while Suiqing excels at tasks like material handling, wall construction, and cleaning in extreme conditions—structurally complementary.
Jinqiao Fund, the investor, stated its decision was based on three converging factors: the policy-accident-driven time window, the team's rare engineering-practical combination, and the industrial ecosystem in Lianyungang, which includes a national petrochemical base, dangerous goods port, and nuclear facilities—providing a natural first stop for Suiqing's expansion from coal to petrochemical and underground spaces.