State-owned capital led the investment! Suzhou UAV company's B round of financing exceeded 100 million!

Recently, Xingluo Intelligent Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xingluo Intelligent"), a domestic fully automatic supplier of drones, completed a round B financing of over 100 million yuan.

It is reported that there are as many as 7 investors in this round, and most of them are "old acquaintances" who continue to increase their investment: led by Guangdong Yueke Mother Fund and Lingang Frontier Artes Yangzhou Fund, Ningbo Norden Venture Capital, Suzhou Industrial Park Science and Technology Innovation Fund, Aowen Venture Capital, Yuanzhan Capital, and Ivy Investment continue to bet.

The funds raised in this round will be used for the mass production and continuous upgrading of Lantern photovoltaic robots , creating a "flying" 45° tilt cleaning robot, and accelerating the promotion and service of the drone wind power inspection product "Yufeng", completing the closed loop from low-altitude intelligent detection to low-altitude intelligent operation and maintenance, opening up the "last mile" of the new energy power generation aftermarket for site users, and taking another key step towards professional and vertical development.

7 rounds of financing in 7 years, with extremely high “national content”

Xingluo Intelligence was founded in 2017. As of now, it has completed seven rounds of financing, reaching the B round, with a disclosed amount of over 150 million yuan.

According to past data, Xingluo Intelligent's shareholder lineup not only has strong state-owned assets, but also has strong "stickiness", and most of them have participated in multiple rounds of financing.

As for this round B financing, the lead investor, Guangdong Science and Technology Fund, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Guangdong Science and Technology Financial Group. Guangdong Science and Technology Financial is not only one of the earliest venture capital institutions established in China, but also directly led by the Guangdong Provincial People's Government (holding 90% of the shares);

Another leading investor, Frontier Investment, is also 100% owned by the state-controlled Shandong Yuxiang Industrial Co., Ltd. It previously focused on new energy manufacturing companies. Xingluo Intelligence and Zhiyuan Robotics, founded by Zhihuijun, are its two "only seedlings" in the robot industry chain layout;

Aowen Ventures, which followed the investment in this round, participated in 5 rounds of financing; Norden Ventures participated in 2 rounds of financing; Ivy Capital participated in 4 rounds of financing; Yuanzhan Capital participated in 5 rounds of financing; and the Science and Technology Innovation Fund, in which the Suzhou Industrial Park Finance and Audit Bureau holds 99.9333% of the shares, also participated in 2 rounds of financing.

This shows that the government and state-owned capital highly recognize Xingluo Intelligence, and the company will further expand its leading advantage after obtaining more policy and financial support.

In fact, in recent years, my country has attached great importance to and strongly supported the new energy industry. In order to achieve the "dual carbon" goal, it is a general trend to continuously increase the installed capacity of new energy.

As global demand for computing power soars, electricity supply shortages will become increasingly prominent, and more and more new energy power stations will face the need to fully absorb the power. How to improve power generation efficiency and reduce operation and maintenance costs has become an urgent problem to be solved.

As the first company to implement a drone intelligent inspection solution that does not require manual operation, Xingluo Intelligent has addressed this pain point and provided full life cycle intelligent operation and maintenance solutions for photovoltaic, wind power and other new energy power stations through technical means such as drones + AI, thereby gaining a place in this yet-to-be-developed blue ocean market.

Open up the “last mile”

From consumer to industrial grade, drones are changing from "toys" to "tools". However, the development of industrial drones is generally immature, and pain points and problems still exist.

It is undeniable that deploying drones to carry out inspection and maintenance of new energy stations has obvious cost and efficiency advantages over the traditional manual mode. However, to truly unleash the potential of drones, "unmanned" is the key.

Xingluo Intelligence has long focused on solving the pain point of "unmanned" drones. In 2018, it deployed the world's first photovoltaic and power grid drone automatic hangars, becoming a pioneer in the industry.

Its "autonomous flying collection" solution enables automatic take-off and landing, autonomous charging and returning to the nest through the drone hangar; on the other hand, with the further improvement of technology level, driven by artificial intelligence, drones can conduct in-depth analysis and intelligent processing of inspection data, actively discover and targetedly troubleshoot and repair fault points, thereby further reducing labor costs.

However, the role of drones in the new energy field is still mainly limited to the intelligent detection level, and there is still some distance from truly closed-loop operation and maintenance, which is exactly the last mile that Xingluo Intelligence hopes to fill.

According to founder Wang Haibin, the company will integrate robotics technology in the future and launch products such as wind turbine blade cavity inspection robots and photovoltaic panel maintenance robots to achieve seamless connection between inspection and operation and maintenance.

Relying on the aerial photography and intelligent recognition capabilities of drones, problem areas can be efficiently identified; while robots are responsible for the specific work of on-site maintenance. Through functions such as autonomous movement and scrubbing and cleaning, they can effectively solve the problem of not being able to be checked in time due to the on-site environment or high labor costs, thereby safeguarding the overall power generation efficiency of new energy sites.

Last words

Empowered by drones and robots, new energy power stations are expected to truly enter the intelligent era.

Discover defects through intelligent analysis, carry out maintenance through intelligent scheduling, and manage cycles through intelligent summary... Intelligent operation and maintenance based on big data will surely release unprecedented productivity and fundamentally promote efficiency innovation in the energy and power generation industry chain.

The greatest value of intelligent operation and maintenance lies not only in its ability to improve power generation efficiency by more than 10%, but also in the broad track it creates.

With the steady increase in installed capacity of photovoltaic and wind power in recent years, and backed by the country's policy dividends of "Eastern Data and Western Computing", the alternation of old and new energy industries is giving birth to countless opportunities, and intelligent operation and maintenance will become an "imaginative blue ocean market."

Faced with the huge demand for intelligence in the new energy industry, Xingluo Intelligence has built an overall solution system with drones as the core, robots as the extension, and cloud-based AI as the support, and is riding on the favorable conditions to usher in a period of explosive development.

At present, the company's drone automation system has been deployed in nearly 200 sets across the country, and its products have been exported to the United Kingdom and other countries; and the photovoltaic inspection system "Yuguang" has also been implemented in 427 sites around the world, covering 8.3GW of installed capacity.

If drone companies like Xingluo Intelligent take root here with a long-term vision and strategic determination, they will surely usher in their highlight moments driven by both national policies and market demand.