Yunzhou Tech (OceanAlpha)
Zhuhai-based Yunzhou Tech, exporting as OceanAlpha, is China's first and largest maker of unmanned surface vessels, fielding civilian survey boats alongside military swarm craft and drone-carrier design work with direct PLA ties.
Background
Yunzhou Tech was founded in Zhuhai in 2010 by Zhang Yunfei, a Hong Kong University of Science and Technology mechanical-engineering doctoral student who began building environmental-monitoring boats and grew the firm into China's first dedicated unmanned surface vessel enterprise. It trades internationally as OceanAlpha and remains headquartered in the Zhuhai National Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, with reported R&D sites in Xi'an and Singapore. The product line spans water-quality monitoring, hydrographic and ocean survey, security and rescue patrol craft such as the L30 and L80, the stealthy M80B survey boat, a long-endurance USV claimed to reach roughly 8,000 kilometers, and a military family that Chinese sources credit as including the country's first missile-armed USV plus electronic-warfare and cooperative-combat variants.
Its signature demonstrations are swarm events: a world-record 56-boat cooperative formation near the Wanshan Islands in 2018, an 81-boat display, and a 2021 'cooperative confrontation' concept designed to besiege and expel intruding vessels. The firm also helped design the 88.5-meter Zhu Hai Yun, described as the world's first drone-carrier mothership capable of deploying more than 50 aerial, surface and undersea drones. The founder describes the company as a military-civil fusion model.
Financial footing
- ~$82.7M reported across four rounds (databases; last disclosed 2018), anchored by a Dec 2018 Series C ~RMB400M (~$58M) led by state-backed Huajin
- Holds a PLA-issued military-production license
- State media (2018) said it had fielded unmanned military vessels since 2014
- 56-boat USV swarm world record (2018)
- 'Cooperative confrontation' swarm to 'besiege and expel' intruders (2021)
- Helped design the 88.5m drone-carrier Zhu Hai Yun (launched 2021)
- Dual-mode 'Blue Whale' USV (Sept 2025)
- Civilian survey/patrol exports to ~50 countries
- No confirmed armed-USV exports
- Backers: State-backed Huajin Financial International Holdings led the 2018 Series C; other reported backers include Qianhai Wutong M&A Fund, BOC & Utrust Private Equity, Zhen Fund, V Star Capital and China International Marine Containers. Full cap table opaque.
Yunzhou is privately held and financially opaque. Private databases report roughly $82.7 million raised across four rounds, but the last firm figure dates to a December 2018 Series C of about RMB400 million (near $58 million) led by state-backed Huajin Financial International Holdings, with reported participation from Qianhai Wutong, BOC & Utrust Private Equity, Zhen Fund, V Star Capital and China International Marine Containers.
A further round was reported in 2021 without disclosed terms. No valuation, no confirmed IPO, and no clear breakdown of any government equity stake are available in open sources, and headcount is undisclosed beyond company claims that roughly half of staff are researchers. Treat all totals as dated estimates rather than audited figures.
Major customers & contracts
The disclosed customer base is dominated by civilian and paramilitary buyers: Chinese environmental and maritime-safety agencies, public-security forces, oceanographic institutes, and offshore and hydrographic operators, plus survey exports reported across roughly 50 countries and territories, including deliveries in Africa and demonstrations in the Middle East and for the Brazilian navy.
The defense side is harder to size. The company holds a PLA-issued military-production license, has entered Chinese military procurement bids, and collaborated with the PLA Navy's mapping institute on a 2017 Antarctic mission. The precise scope of any active PLA Navy contracts, and whether any armed USVs have been exported, are not confirmed in open sources.
Leadership & contact surface
Leadership: Zhang Yunfei (Founder & Chairman)
Official site: https://www.oceanalpha.com
Competitive position
Yunzhou's edge is scale and a decade of swarm-autonomy field demonstrations, giving it a mass-production and cooperative-control lead few peers match. Against Western rivals it competes on cost and volume rather than combat pedigree: US entrants such as Saronic and Textron, Israel's armed patrol USVs, and the attritable Ukrainian strike boats now setting the battlefield benchmark.
Domestically it sits alongside far larger state shipbuilders under China State Shipbuilding Corporation, the electronics conglomerate CETC, and university programs at Shanghai University and Harbin Engineering. Its distinctive position is as a nominally commercial firm supplying autonomy software, hulls and swarm know-how into a state naval ecosystem, blurring the line between a civilian survey vendor and a defense supplier in a way Western competitors generally do not.
Battlefield relevance
In a Taiwan-strait or blockade scenario, cheap, mass-producible USV swarms map directly onto Chinese planning: overwhelming defenses with waves of low-cost boats, screening amphibious approaches, laying or clearing near-shore obstacles, and using a mothership to push autonomous survey and reconnaissance craft into contested waters without risking crews.
Yunzhou's swarm control, its patrol and cooperative-combat hulls, and its drone-carrier design work are all building blocks for such operations, and a research ship it helped design has already skirted Taiwan's contiguous zone. The step from choreographed demonstrations to contested, jamming-heavy combat use remains unproven, and current swarms still depend on vulnerable control links.
Sources & verification
- Kharon — A Chinese Drone Carrier Says It's Just for Science. Under the Surface Lies a Sea of Military Ties. (Aug 2025)
- CSIS Hidden Reach — Skirting the Shores: China's New High-Tech Research Ship Probes the Waters around Taiwan (Feb 2024)
- The Maritime Executive — Chinese Firm Develops Swarming Drones to 'Besiege and Expel' Vessels (Nov 2021)
- The War Zone — China Launches Drone Ship That Acts As A Mothership For More Drones (May 2022)
- China Money Network — Chinese Unmanned Vessel Firm Yunzhou Tech Nets $58M In Series C Round (Dec 2018)