The Chinese power behind 3D chips

"The China Science Integration was first created by a group of 'national talents', the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' 'returned overseas talents'."

"There were three main reasons for establishing the company. First, to industrialize all our scientific research results. Second, after the US sanctions, many domestic companies increasingly felt that they were always subject to the control of others in chips, so accelerating domestic substitution and solving the "bottleneck" problem became our core driver. Third, from the perspective of the entire market, around 2018, the domestic artificial intelligence and chip industries were on the eve of a market explosion in application fields including 3D vision, intelligent manufacturing, high-end consumption, medical beauty, and autonomous driving. Later, we increasingly felt that the potential of this market was huge, so we chose to get involved."

When talking about the original intention of establishing Zhongke Fusion, its co-founder and CTO Dr. Liu Xin said this.

As the only company in China that has independently developed "MEMS chips + SOC chips + core algorithms" and can provide complete AI + 3D chips and module products, Zhongke Fusion has always firmly implemented the concept of "transforming scientific research results into market-oriented products that benefit mankind." It is also based on this that Zhongke Fusion has gradually shifted from "academicization" to "commercialization."

The transformation from "academic" to "commercial"

"Moving from academia to business has been a principle that the Chinese Academy of Sciences has always practiced since its establishment - transforming scientific research results into market products to benefit society. Especially after the reform and opening up, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has further accelerated the pace of marketization." said Dr. Che Hanshu, co-CEO of China Science Fusion.

"In fact, relying on the accumulation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences over the years, the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has not only incubated the integration of Chinese science and technology, but also successfully moved many projects from 'academic' to 'commercial' and achieved remarkable results. The Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has also incubated more than a dozen listed companies, and the output value of intelligent sensing alone has exceeded 100 billion yuan."

It is understood that Zhongke Fusion, founded in 2018, was incubated in the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It entered the 3D imaging market with MEMS structured light 3D sensing modules and provided 3D vision sensor solutions that can be used in robotics , medical beauty, autonomous driving and other fields. Zhongke Fusion independently developed a 3D vision intelligent sensing module with core technologies such as MEMS precision optics, high-precision three-dimensional vision and artificial intelligence algorithms, and high-efficiency 3D SoC computing chips.

Currently, Zhongke Fusion has more than 100 employees, including more than 10 doctors and more than 70 masters. It has a "dream team" that has amazed the industry.

From the background of the core team, Dr. Wang Xuguang, the founder of Zhongke Fusion, graduated from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Tsinghua University in 1999, and then went to the United States for further studies and obtained a doctorate degree from UT Austin. While working at AMD/Spansion and Seagate in the United States, Dr. Wang Xuguang was engaged in the research of chip materials and processes. Later, he was called back to China in 2010 by the "Chinese Academy of Sciences Overseas High-end Talent Introduction Program" and continued to engage in and be responsible for the research and development of SSD controllers. He has complete research and development and product development experience in chip processes, devices, circuit design, algorithms and systems.

In addition, Dr. Liu Xin, co-founder and CTO of Sino-Science Fusion, received his Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and served as Director of the Intelligent Chip Department at the Institute of Microelectronics (IME) of the Agency for Science and Technology (A*STAR), Singapore. He presided over a number of mass-production chip R&D projects in cooperation with large international companies and was responsible for the successful tape-out of dozens of chips. He was later called back to China by the "CAS Overseas High-end Talent Introduction Program" to continue his research in artificial intelligence algorithms, energy-efficient computing processor chips, and optical MEMS imaging systems.

"Our founding team not only has rich experience in product development, but also has sufficient market practice and large enterprise management experience." When faced with the topic of "from academic research to business", Dr. Che Hanshu's seemingly simple and straightforward explanation precisely points out the profoundness of the integration of science and technology.

Perhaps it is precisely based on this combination that a group of investors have seen the great development potential of Zhongke Fusion in the future. In just over four years, Zhongke Fusion has successfully completed four rounds of financing, including two rounds of financing, Pre-A and A, in 2021, with each round of financing amounting to tens of millions of yuan.

It was revealed that Zhongke Fusion has launched its Series B financing plan this year and will give priority to strategic investments from leading industrial capital.

Zhongke Fusion not only performed well in financing, but also in revenue. Since receiving the first order from the market, Zhongke Fusion has been running wild like a wild horse. Its revenue has increased exponentially every year. For example, in 2022, its revenue increased by 2.4 times year-on-year.

"This year's price is expected to increase by 3.5-4 times year-on-year," Dr. Che Hanshu said confidently.

The reason for such confidence is that the application of 3D vision in the Chinese market has just begun, especially with the continuous release of downstream application demand, its future growth potential is huge. This can also be seen from the growth rate of the domestic 3D vision market in previous years.

Data shows that in 2021, the market size of China's machine vision market is 13.816 billion yuan (this data does not include the scale of automated integrated equipment), a year-on-year increase of 46.79%. Among them, the 2D vision market size is about 12.665 billion yuan, and the 3D vision market is about 1.151 billion yuan; the recovery of traditional industrial products has also brought vitality to machine vision, and the growth trend is obvious.

It is estimated that by 2025, the scale of my country's machine vision market will reach 34.9 billion yuan, of which the 2D vision market will exceed 29.1 billion yuan and the 3D vision market will exceed 5.7 billion yuan.

In this regard, Zhang Gaonan, managing partner of Huaying Capital, an investor in Zhongke Financing's A+ round, also publicly stated: "3D vision technology has a wide range of application scenarios in the industry and is a huge incremental market."

At the same time, Zhang Gaonan also expressed long-term optimism about Zhongke Fusion's products and future development. Zhang Gaonan said: "In the field of close-range micron-level high-precision and high-speed detection within 10 meters, Zhongke Fusion has opened up the completely independent MEMS dynamic structured light underlying core manufacturing process and drive control technology, and integrated ultra-low power dedicated AI processors at the front end, greatly reducing the cost of use. Zhongke Fusion's MEMS dynamic structure light technology has extremely high technical barriers and scarcity. Its core 3D smart camera modules and module products can be widely used in many application scenarios that require 3D modeling and space recognition, such as biometrics, machine vision, medical imaging, smart homes, autonomous driving, games and movies, AR/VR design, etc. Huaying is optimistic about the future development of Zhongke Fusion in the long term, and looks forward to working with the company to accelerate the intelligentization process of domestic technology."

"Domestic Substitution" under Deeply Cultivated Products

The reason why Zhongke Fusion can stand out among a number of start-up companies and achieve a series of outstanding results lies in its "product strength".

Currently, Zhongke Fusion’s products mainly include chip products, module products and industrial products.

Taking chip products as an example, it is understood that the algorithm underlying code, hardware acceleration operator, chip architecture, chip circuit, etc. of Zhongke Fusion's 3D+AI VDPU intelligent visual data processing chip are all independently developed, integrating multiple self-developed computing acceleration engines, which can perform real-time high-speed adaptive signal acquisition and analysis processing to better ensure the accuracy of optical imaging. At the same time, the chip supports a variety of general peripherals, including MIPI, Gigabit Ethernet, USB2.0/3.0, etc., and can also be used as a general embedded system development, and has very good promotion prospects in terms of industry applicability.

3D+AI VDPU intelligent visual data processing chip

Zhongke Fusion's first-generation 3D+AI VDPU intelligent visual data processing chip, using a highly mature CMOS production process, has been mass-produced and widely used in its self-developed 3D intelligent medical and aesthetic camera Turnkey module solution. The latest second-generation 3D+AI VDPU intelligent visual data processing chip has evolved from the first generation that only supported Zhongke Fusion's own 3D imaging algorithm to the current support for the respective 3D imaging algorithms of many companies in related industries. It has better algorithm compatibility and covers more application scenarios. The second-generation chip will soon be used in Zhongke Fusion's next-generation 3D camera module.