Shanghai Exoskeleton Company Completes Tens of Millions of Financing

Recently, Jike Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jike Technology") completed a Pre-A round of financing of tens of millions of yuan led by Oasis Capital, with Minerva Capital serving as a long-term exclusive financial advisor. It is reported that the company's consumer-grade exoskeleton robot has been mass-produced, and the funds raised in this round will also be used for large-scale mass production, global market expansion and team expansion.

JiKe Technology was founded in 2021 and is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of consumer exoskeleton products. Through simulation technology and artificial intelligence optimization, it reduces the design and verification of exoskeletons from months to minutes, and cooperates with the user data closed loop to allow users to train the exoskeleton's neural network and simulation development tools with every step of data in the real world.

Previously, the company has completed two rounds of financing and is now in the Pre-A round.

Qi Ji Ventures, founded by Lu Qi, the former founder and CEO of YC China, has supported it since the angel round, investing millions of RMB. In May 2023, the company completed a multi-million dollar Pre-A round of financing, led by Dexun Investment, founded by Zeng Liqing, one of the founders of Tencent and Tencent's lifetime honorary consultant, and Qi Ji Ventures continued to bet on it.

A startup company, after being favored by two big bosses, also received support from emerging capital, which shows that JiKe Technology really has "something".

Entering the hardcore outdoor market

In order to introduce exoskeleton technology into the mass consumer field, we need to find a practical entry point.

Traditional exoskeletons are mainly used in medical rehabilitation and industrial fields. The unit price is tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan. They are positioned as high-end professionals and are difficult to popularize in the mass market. However, outdoor sports enthusiasts have an urgent need for lightweight equipment. They usually need to carry more than 10 kilograms of outdoor survival equipment on long-distance hikes, which consumes a lot of physical strength.

According to public information, the JiKe Technology team is composed of experts in fields such as robotics, ergonomics and AI algorithms, and most members are avid enthusiasts of outdoor activities.

This unique team background gives JiKe Technology a keen sense of the market, enabling them to grasp the urgent demand for lightweight and intelligent equipment in outdoor sports scenes.

Through the Kickstarter crowdfunding channel, JiKe Technology's first product "Hypershell Go" attracted 2,600 supporters and 3,000 orders, with a crowdfunding amount of more than 1.2 million US dollars, dominating the Kickstarter best-selling product list in 2023.

This road to success reflects JiKe Technology's accurate grasp of user needs, and testing the waters overseas first is also a wise move, which not only accumulates successful experience for the later domestic promotion of products, but also lays a solid foundation for the globalization of the brand image.

Innovation drives product iteration

If we want exoskeleton products to truly enter the lives of the general public, simply relying on conceptual selling points will not be enough. We must achieve product iteration and upgrading through continuous technological breakthroughs.

From the perspective of cost and weight, JiKe Technology has made breakthrough progress. By inventing the world's first single-motor-driven exoskeleton system and launching the Omega architecture based on global patents, JiKe Technology has halved the cost and weight of the exoskeleton. At the same time, they have also independently developed a high-power density motor module, which can achieve a maximum power output of 30 Nm while keeping the overall weight within 1.8 kg.

These innovations have significantly reduced the manufacturing cost of exoskeleton products, allowing the terminal sales price to be reduced to one-tenth of traditional products, and for the first time, the price has been reduced to the consumer level of 1,000 yuan. For a wearable device that needs to be worn for a long time, the huge weight and price advantages are undoubtedly the key factors to attract consumers.

In addition to breakthroughs in hardware, JiKe Technology has also made innovative attempts in software algorithms. Traditional exoskeleton products usually use empirical fixed algorithms for control, lacking personalization and intelligent adaptation capabilities. JiKe Technology has independently developed an intelligent system called "Hypershell Motion Engine" (HME), which combines deep learning algorithms with real-time user motion data to achieve automatic recognition and intelligent assistance for different motion scenarios.

In the future, as the user group expands and the frequency of use increases, JiKe Technology's HME system will continue to optimize and iterate with the help of reinforcement learning, and demonstrate strong intelligent compatibility in more application scenarios. It can be foreseen that exoskeletons will gradually get rid of the single function of passive assistance and develop in a more intelligent and personalized direction, providing users with a three-dimensional sports enhancement experience.

Last words

For most consumers, exoskeletons are still a relatively unfamiliar concept. They can hardly be regarded as a necessity in daily life, and their usage scenarios are also limited.

JiKe Technology has transformed the once sci-fi concepts into practical commercial products, opening a door to "robot superpowers" for the mass consumer market.

However, this door has only been opened a crack. To completely open it and move towards a broader stage, JiKe Technology needs to overcome more levels. Whether it is technological innovation or user education, there is still a long way to go.