Two cases of financing in half a month, mobile robots are "a blessing after a long drought"

At present, intelligent manufacturing has become an important strategic direction for China to promote economic transformation and upgrading and realize the dream of becoming a manufacturing power. In this "battle" for intelligent manufacturing, robots are the undisputed protagonists.

Industrial robots As a key force in intelligent manufacturing, they have ushered in a period of rapid development in China in recent years. Since 2014, China has become the world's largest industrial robot market and has continued to lead the way. Mobile robots, as an important sub-segment, have been a battleground for various capitals and industry giants. Large companies have increased their investment, and star start-ups have also been sought after by VCs.

Due to the influence of internal and external factors such as technical barriers and market demand, compared with the popular humanoid concept, traditional industrial robots have been "cold-shouldered" to varying degrees in the capital market. Against the backdrop of the capital market returning to rationality and the track entering a reshuffle period, two good news came from the domestic mobile robot field.

Jiazhi Technology received 20 million strategic financing

On April 8, Hangzhou Jiazhi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiazhi Technology") completed a strategic financing of RMB 20 million, and the company's valuation rose to RMB 1.724 billion. The investor was Zhongkong Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongkong Technology"), a listed industrial intelligent manufacturing solution provider.

After the completion of this capital increase, Zhongkong Technology will hold 1.1628% of the equity of Jiazhi Technology Co., Ltd.

According to Tianyancha, as of now, Jiazhi Technology has completed seven rounds of financing, among which the disclosed amounts of funds raised in the B and B+ rounds have exceeded 100 million yuan.

And the shareholder lineup is also very luxurious. ByteDance and Lenovo Capital participated in the investment twice. Well-known companies such as Shenzhen Capital Group, Xianghe Capital founded by the former president of Baidu Venture Capital, and automation listed company Ankong Technology also invested.

Jiazhi Technology was founded in 2016. The company's founder, Xiong Rong, is a professor and doctoral supervisor at Zhejiang University. He led his team to develop the world's first humanoid table tennis robot system with rapid and continuous response capabilities, and the Shanghai World Expo Haibao robot system, which caused a strong response at home and abroad.

As a high-tech startup born out of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Zhejiang University, the company has been committed to the research and development of autonomous mobile robots based on SLAM navigation technology since its establishment. After years of application practice serving more than 1,000 customers, Jiazhi Technology has built a complete product line including kernel, whole machine and cloud, forming a full value chain of autonomous mobile operation robot industry with independent core technology, leading products and system solutions.

The company's core technology is "natural trackless navigation AMR". This AMR based on laser SLAM fusion navigation technology does not require any auxiliary navigation facilities to be deployed in advance. It can autonomously navigate in any dynamic environment of the factory, which can greatly save factory transformation costs and improve the robot's adaptability and application flexibility.

According to the official website of Jiazhi Technology, the company has created a series of products including industrial-grade standard AMR, industrial-grade omnidirectional AMR, smart forklifts, special-purpose/outdoor/compound robots, and its smart mobile solutions have been implemented in multiple manufacturing fields such as semiconductors, 3C electronics, and automobiles.

As a long-established leader in the field of domestic intelligent manufacturing, Zhongkong Technology, which has been deeply engaged in industrial software and automation control systems for many years, has seen its total operating revenue and total profits increase year by year from 2016 to 2023.

In the past year, against the backdrop of strong demand in the industrial robot market, Zhongkong Technology's revenue and profits have maintained steady growth. During the reporting period, the company achieved revenue of 8.62 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.13%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 1.102 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.08%.

The investment in Jiazhi Technology may be due to the need to integrate upstream and downstream resources and improve the industrial layout. After all, judging from the current trend, in the pursuit of digital factories, the combination of core production equipment and automation systems will become closer and closer, and mobile robots will play a more important role.

Paixun Intelligence Completes Two Rounds of Strategic Financing of Over 100 Million Yuan

On April 10, Suzhou Paixun Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Paixun Intelligent") announced on its official WeChat public account that the company had completed two rounds of strategic financing of over 100 million yuan, with investors including Anhui Guokong Investment and Chuanggu Capital. It is reported that this round of funds will be mainly used for advanced technology research and development, high-end talent introduction, intelligent manufacturing base construction and global market development.

According to Qichacha, as of now, Paixun Intelligent has completed six rounds of financing, among which the A round of financing led by Ginkgo Valley Capital amounted to nearly 100 million yuan, and the B round of financing led by SAIF Investment Fund amounted to over 100 million yuan.

It is worth noting that Ginkgo Valley Capital, which participated in the investment twice, also invested in Jiazhi Technology in 2017.

Founded in 2014, Paixun Intelligence is committed to providing customers with the most advanced, reliable and cost-effective intelligent warehousing and logistics software and hardware products and solutions. Its core products include intelligent warehousing equipment, intelligent handling equipment, digital twin warehousing control platform, etc., forming a "line + edge + warehouse" solution.

Taking the core warehousing product SMT dual-channel intelligent warehousing equipment as an example, this product implements unmanned, precise and intelligent management of electronic materials with "one object, one code and one storage location", and can simultaneously realize material retrieval and storage, with a storage and retrieval efficiency of up to 5-10 seconds/tray, which can greatly improve material turnover efficiency.

With its outstanding technical strength and innovative solutions, Paixun Intelligent has served a number of leading manufacturing companies including Schneider Electric, Goertek, Toshiba, etc. In 2023, Paixun Intelligent's overall revenue increased by more than 50%, and its overseas market continued to expand, with projects in more than 20 countries and regions including the United States, Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Japan.

It is reported that Paixun Intelligence has further increased its investment in scientific and technological research and development, established an AI algorithm team, applied AI technology to warehouse management systems, and is about to build a new intelligent manufacturing base in Bengbu, Anhui, taking a two-pronged approach of "manufacturing" + "empowerment".

Last words

As early as 2015, the State Council clearly proposed in "Made in China 2025" to accelerate the application of industrial robots in manufacturing and focus on cultivating robots as one of the ten major strategic emerging industries.

In recent years, rising labor costs and growing demand for industry automation and intelligent transformation have created a good market environment for the development of mobile robots. According to data, the market size of China's intelligent logistics and mobile robot solutions has a compound growth rate of nearly 50% from 2018 to 2022, and the market size is expected to reach 16.8 billion yuan in 2023.

However, based on the current reality, China's mobile robot industry still has a lot of room for improvement in core technology, application depth and popularity.

Professor Xiong Rong, the founder of Jiazhi Technology, is the director of the Robotics Laboratory of the School of Control Science at Zhejiang University. He has great research advantages in core robotics technologies such as SLAM navigation.

In contrast, Paixun Intelligence focuses more on industrial applications, and its goal is to create a full-process intelligent warehousing and logistics solution for the manufacturing industry. Whether it is visual inspection, warehousing picking or material transportation, Paixun Intelligence continues to increase its R&D investment and has accumulated a lot of practical experience in strategic emerging industries such as semiconductors and new energy.

However, technological innovation requires long-term investment and accumulation.

Jiazhi Technology and Paixun Intelligence have completed several rounds of financing and received strong support from social capital, including well-known investment institutions. The involvement of capital not only provides them with sufficient research and development funds, but more importantly, gives them room for growth, allowing them to focus on deepening their core technologies.

The digital transformation of manufacturing industry is a long process, and mobile robots are just one part of it.

While achieving breakthroughs in this field, how to deeply integrate other links and build a complete intelligent manufacturing ecosystem will also be a topic that domestic manufacturers urgently need to tackle.