Aonic raises US$10M Series A for Malaysia-built agri-drones

Aonic, the Subang Jaya drone maker building spray drones and software for Malaysian oil palm and paddy farms, has closed a US$10 million Series A led by Kairous Capital, according to DealStreetAsia. Announced in March 2026 and backed by Jelawang Capital — Malaysia's national fund-of-funds — through its Emerging Fund Managers' Programme, the round landed on a business already profitable since 2023 and generating more than US$60 million in annual revenue. For a Malaysian investor, the useful part is not the headline cheque but the cap table behind it.

The deal

Two numbers inside the DealStreetAsia report matter more than the round size. The first is the split: Kairous Capital put in US$5 million of the US$10 million, and it was Aonic's first fresh capital raise since its maiden external round in 2022. The second is the ownership afterwards. Kairous comes away with a 7.9% stake and the third-largest shareholder position, while founder and CEO Cheong Jin Xi retains 67.8% and Wavemaker Partners holds 18%, based on filings.

Aonic says the capital goes to international expansion, deeper R&D and higher manufacturing capacity for its Malaysia-built drones and software. KrASIA notes the company runs more than 50 sales, service and spare parts centres across the region and sells an integrated ecosystem — hardware, financing, training and after-sales — rather than drones alone. That is the real shape of the business: a service network wrapped around a machine.

Why this matters

The mechanism is the first thing worth noting. Kairous is a Malaysia-based private equity and venture firm investing across China and ASEAN, and its cheque is backed by Jelawang's Emerging Fund Managers' Programme. That is state-linked capital reaching a private agritech company through a commercial fund manager — not a grant, not a ministry programme, and not a foreign lead investor taking the company offshore. It is the route Malaysia's fund-of-funds architecture was built to produce, and it landed on a company already selling to some of the country's largest plantation groups.

The terms are the second. Kairous took 7.9% and put in half the round, and the founder still controls 67.8% after a US$10 million injection into a company that was already profitable. That is a different proposition from the Series A profile most Malaysian founders are raising against — valuation-led, growth-stage, no profits. Aonic raised on the back of more than US$60 million in annual revenue and triple-digit compound growth since 2022, and it has been profitable since 2023.

The operational numbers come from field work rather than a pitch deck. Jelawang Capital, which sits on the other side of this investment, reports that Aonic's Mist drone is up to 20 times more efficient than manual spraying in paddy fields, while its Oryctes platform, now sold as Mist Tec, delivers point-to-point spraying at eight times the efficiency of manual labour for oil palm and durian. The company also runs Airamap Desktop and the Mist Flight App, and has built a financing product for smallholders who cannot absorb the upfront cost of a drone — which is how a class of local service providers has emerged to spray neighbouring farms on commission. That financing layer is the part a hardware vendor will not sell you: a drone costs more than a season's margin for a Kedah paddy farmer, so the model that reaches the smallholder is a financed machine plus local operators plus training. The Kedah AI agency track is where a single farm's data and workflow get fixed directly, and the Selangor custom software track covers the scoped internal build a mid-sized operator runs instead of buying into a regional platform. Aonic competes with neither, but its push into 15 countries is what a well-funded ecosystem looks like from the outside.

What's next

Three things to watch. First, the cap table: Kairous is a minority holder in a company the founder controls, so any secondary sale or a Series B resets the ownership question — watch whether Kairous writes another cheque. Second, the rules. The Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia published its proposed Malaysia Low Altitude Economy Framework for consultation in August 2026, with finalised guidelines expected by the end of the year, and the Investment, Trade and Industry Ministry has a Unmanned Valley Ecosystem pilot under the 13th Malaysia Plan. CAAM projects the sector could be worth RM30 billion by 2030. Regulatory certainty is the tailwind for the next round. Third, the geography: the money is explicitly for reseller and distributor expansion beyond the 15 countries Aonic operates in now, so the first non-Southeast Asian market announcement is the marker to watch.

Source: DealStreetAsia — Malaysia's drone tech firm Aonic secures $10M led by Kairous Capital