By Liang Kaier
Chinese smart home appliance maker Dreame Technology is overhauling its business structure to refocus on its core technologies while imposing a more disciplined approach to expansion after branching into businesses ranging from robot vacuum cleaners to electric scooters, humanoid robots, smartphones and automobiles.
The company said on June 18 that revenue from its core businesses rose 80% year-on-year in the first five months of 2026. It also said its global retail footprint had surpassed 10,000 stores, with sales and service networks covering more than 120 countries and regions.
The figures could not be independently verified. However, if accurate, they suggest the restructuring is taking place while Dreame remains in a growth phase rather than as a response to deteriorating performance.
Dreame announced what it described as a strategic reorganization designed to return the company to its roots in advanced technology development and commercialization. While maintaining investment in its core smart cleaning business, the company said it would continue exploring areas such as smart homes, personal mobility and embodied artificial intelligence, leveraging common underlying technologies across different product categories.
According to people familiar with the matter, the restructuring abandons Dreame’s previous “incubator” model, under which new businesses were grouped into separate entrepreneurial units. Instead, similar businesses will be consolidated into larger operating divisions.
Four business groups
The restructuring centers on four main business groups.
The Dreame Brand Group will focus on indoor cleaning products such as robot vacuum cleaners and floor-cleaning devices, while gradually expanding into broader smart home appliances.
The MOVA division will concentrate on robotic lawnmowers and outdoor garden robots. NAVEE will oversee personal mobility products including electric scooters and motorcycles. A separate robotics division will house humanoid robot projects as well as future industrial and commercial robotics initiatives.
Smartphone and automotive projects, which have attracted significant market attention in recent years, will be moved into a new industrial research institute focused on longer-term technology development.
Several employees told Huxiu that many of the announced changes have yet to be fully implemented and that most operations continue to function under the previous structure.
Layoffs begin
Employees said the consolidation is already leading to redundancies as overlapping teams are merged.
One employee said some business units had already been shut down and their responsibilities transferred elsewhere. An industry source familiar with the company said Dreame typically conducts annual mid-year staff reductions of around 10%, although this year’s cuts appear somewhat higher.
The restructuring reflects an effort to place businesses into clearer organizational categories.
The indoor cleaning division remains the company’s core business and main source of revenue, cash flow and brand strength. The reported 80% growth in core operations underscores the continuing importance of robot vacuums, cordless vacuum cleaners and related products.
MOVA, meanwhile, is being positioned as a second growth engine around robotic lawnmowers and outdoor garden robots. These share many of the same underlying technologies as indoor cleaning machines, including motors, navigation systems, obstacle avoidance and motion-control software, making them a relatively natural extension of Dreame’s existing expertise.
NAVEE’s focus on electric scooters and motorcycles also appears more commercially achievable than the company’s automotive ambitions, given shorter product cycles and less-complex supply chains.
Lowering expectations
The most speculative business remains robotics. Dreame has previously promoted a broader vision of embodied intelligence that extends beyond humanoid robots, including machines equipped with robotic arms designed to perform household tasks.
The robotics division will also include MagicLab, a Dreame-backed developer of humanoid robots and robotic dogs.
The decision to move smartphone and automotive projects into a research-focused institute suggests Dreame is attempting to lower expectations around near-term commercialization without abandoning those ambitions altogether.
Dreame’s expansion strategy over the past several years followed a familiar pattern in China’s hardware industry: build scale in one successful category, then transfer supply-chain expertise, distribution channels and engineering capabilities into adjacent markets.
The challenge is that such advantages do not extend indefinitely. Moving from robot vacuums into lawnmowers offers clear technological synergies. Extending into personal mobility remains plausible. But smartphones, automobiles and humanoid robots involve entirely different competitive dynamics and far longer investment horizons.
The restructuring therefore represents more than an organizational reshuffle. It is an attempt by Dreame to determine which businesses should generate profits today, which should drive future growth, and which remain bets on technologies that may take years to mature. For a company whose success was built on replicating winning formulas across categories, redefining those boundaries may prove its most difficult task yet.
Source:
Huxiu Technology
