CiDi Eyes Overseas Expansion for Autonomous Mining
CiDi, the Hong Kong-listed Chinese autonomous mining equipment maker, expects overseas deployments to grow this year as it expands beyond its home market.
Chief Executive Albert Hu told Reuters the company is targeting contracts in Australia, the Middle East, South America and Europe.
CiDi has already equipped partially automated autonomous excavators in Australia, and is preparing a larger rollout there this year. Albert says he expects overseas markets to contribute a double-digit percentage of revenue next year, up from a low single-digit share currently.
- CiDi expects overseas markets to contribute a double-digit percentage of revenue next year
- CiDi raised around US$179m in its December 2025 Hong Kong IPO, reaching a market capitalisation of US$1.47bn
- CiDi's revenue more than doubled last year to 884.8m yuan (US$130.6m)
The company went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in December 2025, raising approximately US$179m and reaching a market capitalisation of US$1.47bn.
CiDi was founded in 2017 by Li Zexiang, a Hong Kong University of Science and Technology professor who also mentored DJI founder Frank Wang Tao and served as the drone maker's chairman.
CiDi's revenue more than doubled last year to 884.8m yuan (US$130.6m), with deployments and revenue growing 374% in China, compared with roughly 73% for the wider industry, according to Albert.
CiDi's growing autonomous fleet
CiDi's hero product is METAMINE, which is a full-stack autonomous mining platform that combines driverless trucks, a fleet coordination module, a central dispatch system and a teleoperation station for remote control of excavators, as well as other equipment.
The company's global fleet has grown to more than 1,700 vehicles, mostly deployed in China, across 30 quarries and coal mines. A single operator can monitor around 100 trucks remotely, a ratio Albert says can scale further.
“Is it a truck? Or is it a robot? We're blurring the lines between the two. ”
CiDi says it delivered the world's largest mixed-fleet autonomous mining operation, running 56 driverless trucks alongside around 500 manned trucks at a single Chinese mining site. Roughly 10% of mining trucks in China are now driverless, more than any other country, according to Albert.
CiDi's autonomous trucks operate at 104% of the efficiency of human-driven trucks, as certified by China's National Institute of Metrology in 2022, according to the company.
Going beyond haulage
CiDi is also developing robots for blasting and drilling, work Albert describes as "very dangerous, very precise." Some of the company's trucks are now fitted with robotic arms, blurring the line between vehicle and robot, he says.
CiDi-equipped explosive-handling units are expected to be deployed in the third quarter of 2026, with drilling robots following early next year.
The rollout will begin in Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, provinces where scrutiny of mine safety has intensified since a gas explosion killed 82 workers at a coal mine in Shanxi in May.
Coordinating large fleets is key part of CiDi's strategy, according to Albert. At some large coal mines, up to 500 autonomous trucks operate at once, a scale he describes as a significant technological threshold for competitors to match.
CiDi has a distribution partnership with British mining equipment maker MMD Group, and is looking to add further partners, including China-based mine operators, as it expands overseas.
