This robotics company in Shenzhen raised two more rounds of financing at the beginning of the year, totaling over 100 million yuan!

Today, Shenzhen Yueshi Robotics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yueshi Robotics") , a cold chain cloud factory platform , completed tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A2 round of financing. It is reported that this round was exclusively invested by Jinshajiang United Capital, and the funds raised will be used for product research and development, order delivery, team expansion and overseas layout.

This happened only two months after the beginning of the new year of 2024, when Shunchuang Industry invested exclusively in the Pre-A round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan. The speed at which Yueshi Robotics attracts money is comparable to "riding a rocket."

Empowered by science and technology, cold chain reform is imperative

Cold chain logistics is a key link in ensuring the quality and safety of fresh food. However, for a long time, the development of my country's cold chain logistics industry has lagged behind, with many pain points and shortcomings.

At present, the cold chain circulation rate of fresh agricultural products in my country is relatively low.

According to data, the cold chain circulation rate of fruits, vegetables, meat and aquatic products in the United States is over 97%, while that of fruits, vegetables, meat and aquatic products in my country is only 35%, 57% and 69% respectively. The low circulation efficiency is caused by many circulation links, low scale and low organization, and most fresh agricultural products cannot be kept fresh at low temperatures during transportation.

There is also much room for improvement in cold chain infrastructure construction.

According to data, the cold storage capacity of the United States is 103 million tons, and the per capita cold storage capacity is 0.48 tons, while my country currently has only 52.24 million tons of cold storage capacity, and the per capita cold storage capacity is only 0.037 tons. The number of refrigerated trucks is also far lower than that of developed countries, with only 0.2 per thousand people, while the United States has as high as 1 per thousand people.

In addition, as far as the current situation is concerned, the vast majority of my country's cold chain companies are small in scale and have low industry concentration. They are in urgent need of integration and leadership from leading companies. Moreover, due to the scarcity of professional cold chain talent in the industry, "chain breaks" are very likely to occur, resulting in high loss rates and high logistics costs.

Faced with the above challenges, the country has also taken strong action and introduced corresponding policies to encourage the development of the industry.

On December 13, 2021, the General Office of the State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for Cold Chain Logistics" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), pointing out that in the future my country will vigorously promote the intelligent upgrading of the cold chain industry, accelerate the transformation of traditional cold storage facilities, and promote automatic three-dimensional shelves, intelligent sorting, logistics robots, temperature monitoring and other advanced equipment to create automated unmanned cold chain warehouses.

In addition, the "Plan" also proposed time nodes for the first time: it is clear that by 2025, a cold chain logistics network connecting production and sales areas, covering cities and villages, and connecting domestic and international markets will be initially formed; looking forward to 2035, a modern cold chain logistics system will be fully built, and the facility network, technical equipment, and service quality will reach the world's advanced level, and the industry's supervision and governance capabilities will be basically modernized.

Behind the heavy financing: both technology and scenario application are equally important

At the end of 2023, Guangdong Ten Robotics made headlines with its "three rounds of financing in three months". Although the investment amounts were not high, the angel round and strategic financing amounts were both in the tens of millions of RMB, but there were many well-known investment institutions such as fund investments under the Fortune Global 500.

As of March 25, 2024, Yueshi Robot has completed five rounds of financing within half a year.

As a start-up company, Yueshi Robot has received such popularity and become a "newcomer" in the robotics industry. The main reasons are its technology and business potential.

In 2022, doctoral teams from Peking University, Zhejiang University, and the University of Hong Kong jointly founded Yueshi Robotics. Team members have many years of research accumulation in core technology fields such as artificial intelligence, environmental perception, deep learning, and servo control.

The company's founder and CTO Zhang Haoran is currently an assistant professor at the School of Urban Planning and Design of Peking University. In November last year, he won the second prize in the world at the "2023 Huawei Developer Competition" with his "Robot Algorithm Big Model".

It is reported that the "robot algorithm big model" has changed the isolated state between goods, people and warehouse scenes in the previous cold chain transportation process, enabling close coordination between the upstream and downstream of the business chain, successfully reducing costs and increasing efficiency for enterprises.

For the cold chain industry, the biggest obstacle to achieving unmanned operation is overcoming the special working environment of cold storage. Due to long-term low temperature, humidity and other harsh conditions, how to ensure the reliable operation of robots has always been a "hard bone" in the industry.

To address this pain point, Guangdong Ten Robotics independently developed the unmanned cold storage FLT (Penguin No. 1). This world-first low-temperature intelligent forklift can operate stably in an environment of -30°C, with a protection level of IP67, and has successfully solved the problem of using power batteries, mechanical parts and electronic components at low temperatures.

At the same time, the product also solves the problems of condensation and frost during the alternation of hot and cold, and realizes 120A two-hour wireless fast charging, effectively reducing the energy consumption of cold storage. By connecting with the intelligent dispatching system, the unmanned forklift can operate efficiently around the clock, without interruption, and significantly improves operational efficiency.

What is more worth mentioning is that "Penguin No. 1" can be seamlessly connected with more than 99% of the hardware equipment on the market, and at the same time has flexible configuration capabilities to cope with flexible production with high and low peaks. This versatility lays the foundation for the promotion and popularization of unmanned systems.

But technology is only one aspect. Unlike other similar robot projects, the research and development ideas of Yueshi Robot have been closely centered around application scenarios from the very beginning, which is also a key factor that makes investment institutions believe in its commercial prospects.

The parent company of Yueshi Robot is Qianhai Yueshi, a leading domestic agricultural product cold chain enterprise. The latter serves more than 42 million tons of agricultural product cold chain parks around the world and covers more than 1,000 transportation trunk lines across the country. Its status cannot be underestimated.

As a "partner" of the upstream and downstream industrial chains, Yueshi Robot relies on the huge resources and market share advantages of its parent company and has unique advantages in insights into cold chain application scenarios.

Yueshi Robotics is committed to building a general technology platform for cold chain intelligent mobile robots, which means that in the entire process of cargo handling, warehousing, and outbound delivery, the intelligent system can realize data management and visual tracking of material status, which not only reduces labor costs, but also greatly reduces the risk of cargo damage.

It is understood that Yueshi Robot has been put into use in some cold chain storage scenarios in Shenzhen Port Park. Benefiting from the improvement of funds and team strength after financing, future product delivery and commercial promotion will be further accelerated.

Last words

Throughout the world, intelligence is becoming an important driving force for the transformation of various industries. In the field of cold chain, this trend will become increasingly prominent, and unmanned cold storage is a new track opened up in line with the development trend of the times.

But despite the broad prospects, the intelligent transformation of the cold chain industry will not be achieved overnight.

For a long time, my country's cold chain logistics field has remained in the labor-intensive operation stage, with insufficient motivation to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and slow progress in establishing digital thinking. This has led to the need for systematic changes in operating processes and management models even with the investment in automated equipment, otherwise modern equipment will find it difficult to fully exert its effectiveness.

In addition, high initial investment and complex project execution may make enterprises daunted, and lack of successful experience and strong support will inevitably make many enterprises doubtful. Moreover, although popular technologies such as artificial intelligence and robots are of high value, if the products cannot truly solve the pain points of the industry and adapt to actual needs, even if the technology is advanced, it will be difficult to be recognized by the market.

Looking ahead, the cold chain industry will inevitably present a development pattern of "robot + cloud platform", traditional cold storage operations will be completely reconstructed, and the application of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and 5G will become the norm. At the same time, the intelligentization of cold chain will further release industry dividends and inject new momentum into cold chain enterprises.