Yu Hao Deeply Entangled in Controversy: Who Will Underwrite the Billions of Dreame?
2026-06-09 07:00:00 Source: 21st Century Business Herald Beijing
(Original title: Yu Hao Deeply Entangled in Controversy: Who Will Underwrite the Billions of Dreame?)
The frenzied screen-scrolling of Yu Hao and the aggressive expansion of Dreame seem to have been temporarily paused.
On June 5, the Weibo homepage of Yu Hao, founder and CEO of Dreame Technology, displayed: "Due to violation of relevant laws and regulations, this user is currently in a muted state." Later, Yu Hao posted in the company's internal group, stating that he would continue to focus on the real economy, persist in technological innovation, and tackle the world's most difficult markets.
On the same day, according to Caixin, a district in a city in the Yangtze River Delta was requiring statistics on the cooperation between local enterprises and Dreame Technology, including but not limited to cooperative projects, capital investment, fiscal and state-owned capital investment, etc. A local official responded: "It was a unified deployment by the city. Our area has no such situations after preliminary screening."
In the past three months, almost everyone's phone has been swiped by Yu Hao's face. Yu Hao, a graduate of Tsinghua University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, is 39 years old and has a strong desire to perform. Just from May 3 to May 5, Yu Hao posted more than 200 videos, averaging one every 13 minutes. Each video lasts 15 seconds, with no editing, no subtitles, filmed whenever he thinks of something. Content includes attacking Xiaohongshu, calling on all 22,000 employees of Dreame to open self-media accounts, wanting to become the world's richest person and a "nurturing CEO." Facing external criticism, he said: "I will retaliate for the slightest grievance!"
If the above expressions are just an extension of his personality, that's understandable; but his unexpected expressions and operations in business are even more astonishing. Yu Hao revealed that Dreame already has over 200 BUs operating independently, with the ultimate goal of making Dreame "the first hundred-trillion-dollar company ecosystem in human history," and to "reinvent the Earth."
Common sense would suggest that such an attitude would make any investor run away; but paradoxically, some local government industrial funds are flocking to it.
According to data from Xiniu as of March 2026, the 67 funds managed by Dreame's Sky Factory Venture Capital (formerly Dreame Capital) totaled 416.05 billion yuan, with LPs (limited partners) mainly consisting of state-owned capital from multiple regions. Yu Hao himself admitted in a media interview that the actual fundraising has exceeded 20 billion yuan, and "20% from ourselves, 80% from local governments."
In response to the news that a district in a city in the Yangtze River Delta is requiring statistics on cooperation with Dreame Technology, a BU head of Dreame's mature business replied exclusively to the 21st Century Business Herald: "It can be guaranteed that all fund investments under Dreame are compliant. Currently, our responsible business investments in Shaoxing and other places have been implemented and have production capacity."
Dreame is still seeking financing. Dreame recently plans to open a direct financing window. The pre-investment valuation for this round may be locked at around 70 billion yuan, with a minimum single investment threshold of 350 million yuan. The entire financing window is expected to close in early July.
A professional following the primary market told the 21st Century Business Herald that the maximum 70 billion yuan pre-investment valuation is mid-level in the recent domestic primary market, but the minimum 350 million yuan threshold is already high-end player level. Most LPs cannot reach it, and the main participants are still long-term funds such as national teams, large strategic funds, and social security funds.
From aggressive expansion and nationwide screen-scrolling, to Yu Hao being muted and full investigation, can Dreame's "hundred-billion ecosystem dream" continue?
Reviewing Dreame's Capital Game
Why can a seemingly flashy founder and his unlisted company attract local industrial funds to invest repeatedly?
To explain this, we must start with Dreame's "ledger."
At Dreame's 2025 annual meeting, Yu Hao presented a set of impressive numbers: total company revenue in 2025 exceeded 40 billion yuan, with growth rate exceeding 100% for six consecutive years, overseas revenue accounting for nearly 80%, and "18% of main business net profit as year-end bonuses, totaling 1 billion yuan." By reverse calculation, Dreame's 2025 net profit was about 5.55 billion yuan.
This number is somewhat abrupt in the cleaning industry. Currently, Dreame ranks third in global share of cleaning products. The top two cleaning product leaders, Ecovacs and Roborock, had net profits of 1.758 billion yuan and 1.36 billion yuan respectively in 2025—both listed companies with audited disclosures, yet their combined profits are less than 60% of Dreame's. Yu Hao explained: "Because Dreame gave up low-profit markets."
Dreame is not listed, and its data is unaudited, but that doesn't stop some local governments from being tempted. What seems more unique is its business model.
In March 2025, Dreame officially announced it had become a "borderless" ecosystem enterprise, proposing "born without borders"—entering large appliances, mobile phones, drones, chips, and new energy vehicles, building a "people, vehicle, home, earth, sky, chip" full ecosystem. In addition to technology and manufacturing, this BU network even extends to finance, clothing, cosmetics, and milk tea, truly a Dreame "universe."
Dreame's specific approach is to split the entire company into more than 200 BUs, each with independent teams, equity, and profit/loss responsibility. The option incentives for each BU member are strongly tied to the success or failure of their own BU.
Yu Hao explained the logic behind this approach to the media: "From the first day, Dreame was not meant to guard a single curve, but to continuously create new curves—second, third, fourth, each larger and deeper than the last."
And the new curves Dreame wants to create almost all hit the hard-tech track, which is the preferred direction for driving industrial clusters and transformation across regions.
In June 2024, the signing ceremony for the Dreame Robot Yangtze River Delta Industrial Base project was held in Shaoxing. A relevant official from Shaoxing Binhai New Area stated: "The cooperation between Shaoxing Binhai New Area and Dreame Technology will not only help Dreame accelerate its regional strategic layout, expand smart home appliance production capacity, and expand commercial application scenarios for smart robots, but will also play an important role in supplementing and strengthening the high-end advanced manufacturing industry chain in Shaoxing."
Additionally, Dreame started in Suzhou. According to a June 2025 report by Suzhou Daily, the Suzhou branch of China Merchants Bank has been closely cooperating with Dreame since its inception, granting Dreame its first 20 million yuan credit line in early 2020.
Other joint-stock banks and city commercial banks have also participated in financing Dreame. A relevant person from a city commercial bank's Suzhou branch told the 21st Century Business Herald that their bank also has loans to Dreame, about one to two hundred million yuan, but the scale is not as large as China Merchants Bank. Another joint-stock bank's Suzhou branch also revealed that the current loan scale to Dreame is around one hundred million yuan.
Dreame's "universe" has thus matched the calculations of some local state-owned capital, and its model of "chain-owner enterprise + fund investment attraction" provided a template for other state-owned capital to enter later:
Local governments use industrial fund money to exchange for the chain-owner enterprise Dreame's industrial landing;
Dreame uses its own brand, technology, and industry chain discourse power to act as the government's "industrial investment partner," with industrial fund money preferentially invested in its own ecosystem; at the same time, it sets up industrial parks locally, forming a closed loop of "fund invests ecosystem, ecosystem drives industry, industry promotes taxation";
Among them, local governments contribute 80% as LPs, enjoying returns and supervision rights but not interfering in specific investment decisions; while the Dreame system acts as GP, contributing 20% and having 100% investment decision power.
This seems like a win-win story. Even if a BU incubated or an enterprise invested by Dreame fails to succeed in the short term, at least the Dreame entity itself can set up factories locally, contributing revenue and taxes.
But Dreame's own growth is approaching a ceiling: its global share in cleaning appliances has reached about 12%, making it basically impossible to double; the Pre-IPO valuation is about 100 billion yuan, while main business revenue is 15 billion yuan, leaving a huge gap. To fill the gap, Dreame has carried out a "full universe" business layout, but the time required for the "Dreame universe" to fully take shape is too long: chips and satellite technology thresholds are too high, the mobile phone market is already a red ocean, and the large appliance market is growing extremely slowly.
And the story that can attract the most attention in a short time is new energy vehicles.
Betting on "Rocket Cars": Many Mysteries Beneath Ambition
In August 2025, Dreame officially announced car manufacturing.
In February 2026, Dreame launched the "Star Trek" brand, releasing three SUVs; in March at the AWE exhibition, it released the "Star Plan," introducing three ultra-luxury concept cars, which subsequently appeared at the Beijing Auto Show and Silicon Valley launch event. The brightest spotlight was on the concept car Nebula NEXT 01 JET Edition, equipped with a dual solid rocket booster system—claiming 0-100 km/h in 0.9 seconds with a total instantaneous thrust of about 10.2 tons.
The person in charge of the Star Plan team, Ma Junye, said that a dynamic prototype of the "rocket car" had already been built, "it is a drivable car, and it will be tested at the proving ground at the end of May," and will later be produced as a limited collector's edition, with pricing possibly above ten million yuan.
But there are many mysteries surrounding this car.
First, controversy over acceleration. The concept car plans to achieve 0-100 km/h in 0.9 seconds. Using kinematic formulas, the reporter calculated that the average acceleration is about 3.15g; based on Newton's second law, considering weight reduction from fuel consumption, the peak acceleration could be about 5.67g.
However, the acceleration limit of all wheeled vehicles is ultimately determined by the friction between tires and the road surface, and Newtonian mechanics cannot be broken. Even using the best drag racing slick tires (completely treadless, ultra-soft hot-melt compound, designed for drag racing), the optimal friction coefficient is only 2.22.5, corresponding to acceleration of 2.22.5g.
Dreame's claimed 0.9 seconds far exceeds the tire grip limit. Such enormous thrust may cause the tires to instantly spin and burn, or push the entire car forward in a slide, and any slight deviation in direction could be disastrous.
Second, the doubt about 10.2 tons of total instantaneous thrust. The instantaneous kinetic energy corresponding to 10 tons of thrust is about 77,000 joules, more than three times that of top supercars like the Porsche Taycan Turbo S. To stop within a reasonable distance, about 10 tons of braking force would be required. Solid rockets, once ignited, cannot be shut off, and existing carbon-ceramic braking systems would be melted within 0.1 seconds.
A comparison is Tesla's Roadster 2—Musk also claims to equip a "rocket technology" SpaceX option package. But Musk's rocket technology uses cold gas thrusters, each controllable independently for on/off and thrust, usable for acceleration, cornering, braking, and attitude control, and most importantly, reusable. Even so, the Roadster 2 has repeatedly been delayed and is still not on the road.
Most importantly, as a "drivable" concept car, its parameters exceed the physiological limits of the human body. F1 drivers, after professional training, wearing driving suits, and entering specially designed F1 cars, experience zero-to-100 linear acceleration in the range of only 1.0~1.2g, with peaks around 1.3g, typically around 2.5 seconds.
Dreame's 0.9-second zero-to-100 means that when acceleration starts, the driver's body weight would feel about three times heavier, slammed into the seat; when reaching the peak 5.67g, they would likely see blackness and lose consciousness. Even top athletes trained in F1 and fighter jets would experience severe physiological stress at this level, barely maintaining consciousness and unable to perform any effective driving operations.
As of June, Dreame has not released any information about actual testing of this "rocket car."
Dreame's other car line, "Star Trek," has been accused of plagiarism by competitors.
On February 4, 2026, Dreame released three SUVs: Star T08, T08L, and D09. However, the Star T08 and T08L were quickly noticed by netizens to "look like" Dongfeng Mengshi M817 and M917; another SUV, Star D09, was accused of copying Lantu. Zhao An, deputy general manager of Mengshi Automobile, directly shouted: "Is it really a new car launch? Are you sure it's not our Mengshi M817?"
Investigation Landed: Where Will Dreame Go?
On April 30, 2026, Yu Hao's personal Weibo disclosed that the new round of financing target was over 60 billion yuan, approximately $10 billion valuation—about three times Dreame's current overall valuation. But there has been no public news of any funds arriving for this financing. Dreame's most recent public market financing stopped three years ago.
In response, Yu Hao believes that car manufacturing isn't as expensive as people think; it's "only expensive when you build the wrong car." Building a car requires 10 billion to 30 billion yuan "enough," and 10 billion yuan is split over five years, just "2 billion a year." "Dreame has previously accumulated several billion yuan in financing, but from founding to profitability, very little money was burned; we are very efficient."
Additionally, the three "Star Trek" SUVs were previously reported to be manufactured in cooperation with Changan, BAIC, and other automakers, but both denied this later. Yu Hao believes that getting a production license for car manufacturing in China is not a problem. He has studied the history of automobile manufacturing over the past thirty years and believes that China has never truly stopped people who seriously want to build cars, "only blocking speculators." In the short term, it may be uncertain, but "in the long run, it's not a problem."
But suppose Dreame actually produces these six cars; how much can they earn? Take the ultra-luxury pure electric market that Dreame is entering; currently, its global annual sales are less than 100,000 units. The Yangwang brand, backed by BYD's annual sales of millions of units and technical strength, only exceeded 10,000 cumulative sales by April 2025. Dreame is starting from scratch in a market that BYD cannot crack.
As for Dreame's "full universe," the funds have just completed the first phase of fundraising for over a year, and most projects are still in early or growth stages. From an industry attraction perspective, the tens of billions of state-owned capital have indeed leveraged a high-growth Dreame and driven multiple regional industrial clusters. But from a financial perspective, state-owned capital must climb a long waiting period to get returns, while Dreame's cross-industry investment is rapidly expanding, increasing both the pressure for additional investment and the business risk.
Regarding Dreame's recent controversial voices, local state-owned banks, joint-stock banks, and city commercial banks in Suzhou are also paying close attention. Multiple local bank sources told the 21st Century Business Herald that banks engage in relatively conservative traditional lending businesses, so they are somewhat uneasy after seeing the public opinion. A branch manager quickly checked with the lending sub-branch to confirm loan safety after seeing the news.
"It's really a bit hard to understand," one branch executive said. However, they still retain financing support for Dreame's main business, believing it is currently in a healthy state.
Additionally, it should be clarified that the 1.1 billion yuan given by China Merchants Bank to Dreame is a "credit line," not a "disbursement." The former is the "nominal maximum" granted by the bank, while the latter is the "actual money received" by the enterprise.
Essentially, state-owned capital is betting on a story: can Dreame transform from a robot vacuum manufacturer into a true technology company?
But the biggest variable in this story seems to be Yu Hao himself—outsiders question Yu Hao's absolute control over Dreame, and capital contributes large sums but cannot check the actual controller. In 2025, Yu Hao increased his shareholding in Dreame to 70% through a 5 billion yuan share buyback. At the governance level, Yu Hao is the sole decision-maker of Dreame.
At the same time, Yu Hao is also the decision-maker of the fund's IC (Investment Committee), both highly tied to Yu Hao. When the sole decision-maker chooses a high-risk path without external constraints to apply the brakes, good decisions are amplified, and bad decisions are also amplified.
Dreame may be aware of this problem. Part of the Pre-IPO shares Dreame plans to release includes both founder team share transfers and new share issuance at the company level. Part will be released through a capital increase, while the rest comes from old shares directly held by Yu Hao.
However, Yu Hao previously believed that the market generally accepts and even expects these to be tied to him. He stated that he does not "make decisions alone"; each fund has its own IC, and he lets teams make independent decisions more often, claiming he is "actually an extremely cautious person."
Now, Dreame is about to open a direct financing window; reality will give Yu Hao a real answer.
(Author: He Xuyang Editor: Wu Xiaoyu, Zhang Mingyan)
