The robot business has been profitable for five consecutive years. A Shanghai company has received 100 million yuan in financing, and Lei Jun's fund participated in the investment.

Shunwei Capital’s official microblog released a message on March 20 that Shanghai Mobile’s composite robot company SAZHI Intelligent completed a nearly RMB 100 million Series A financing led by Shunwei. The investors in this round are Shunwei Capital and Ivy Capital. The funds raised in this round will be used for technological innovation, product iteration and market expansion.

On February 5, Sashi Intelligent disclosed changes in its industrial and commercial information. Its registered capital increased from 6.03 million to 6.72 million. It added Guangzhou Chufeng Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), Shanghai Minhang Technology Achievement Transfer and Transformation Venture Capital Partnership (Limited Partnership), Tianjin Haihe Shunke Equity Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), etc. At the same time, the shares of Zhang Jianzheng, Shanghai Funao Enterprise Management Partnership (Limited Partnership), and Shanghai Wonian Information Technology Center (Limited Partnership) decreased.

According to public information, Sashi Intelligence has completed two rounds of financing before, namely a RMB 10 million angel round invested by Jinyumaowu and Yuan Yang Investment in 2021, and a tens of millions Pre-A round led by Shenzhen Capital Group in 2023.

Profitable for 5 consecutive years, looking overseas

It is reported that SAZHI Intelligence has achieved profitability for five consecutive years and will focus on overseas markets such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the future.

SAZHI Intelligent's products are divided into two lineups: intelligent manufacturing series and intelligent operation and maintenance series. Among them, the intelligent manufacturing series includes AMR autonomous mobile robots, intelligent mobile operation composite robots and intelligent load-carrying robots, which can respectively cope with different weight transportation scenarios in industry and commerce. The product line of the intelligent operation and maintenance series includes four commercial robots such as inspection, inventory, distribution and disinfection.

SAZHI Intelligent has set its sights on two important overseas markets, and the outside world speculates that it is tailor-made for the two lineups of products. Southeast Asia has a large demand for manufacturing, and the layout of the Southeast Asian market is conducive to the sales of intelligent manufacturing products; the Middle East is most famous for energy and tourism, and commercial service robots have more room for development.

The agency predicts that the market size of industrial and service robots in Southeast Asia is expected to reach US$1.11 billion in 2024, and will increase at an annual compound growth rate of about 8% in the next five years, reaching US$1.62 billion in 2029.

Driving Southeast Asia Industrial robots The demand growth mainly comes from industries such as automotive parts, electronic manufacturing, and logistics. The Malaysian Statistics Bureau once disclosed data that Malaysia's manufacturing industry accounts for 23.4% of the country's GDP, of which the manufacturing of electronic components and circuit boards, communication equipment, and consumer electronics products accounts for about 5% of the country's GDP. The Singapore Statistics Bureau gave data in 2022, and the country's industrial production index for computers and electronic products reached 129.24 throughout the year, setting a 10-year high.

The Middle East is one of the main export routes for Chinese robot manufacturers. The Middle East has rich energy resources and a per capita GDP between US$23,000 and US$84,000. According to Julia Simpson, president and CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the Middle East tourism industry will create 3.6 million new jobs in the next decade, and some of these jobs are likely to be replaced by robots in the future.

Today, the domestic robot market is in a serious state of internal competition, and manufacturers are seeking overseas solutions. The five consecutive years of profitability laid by SAZHI Intelligent in the domestic market has provided sufficient support for their overseas strategy to a large extent.

Jiaotong University PhD starts a business, aiming to make a well-known national brand of robots

The technical strength of a robotics company is the key to determining how long the company will survive in the future.

Zhang Jianzheng, the founder of SAZHI Intelligence, holds a Doctor of Engineering degree in Robotics from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has worked for FANUC Robotics, one of the four largest robot families, and Shanghai STAR Robotics, a well-known domestic robot company, and other robot companies. He has held important positions such as engineering technology director, R&D director, and business unit general manager. He has 16 years of experience in robot R&D and founded SAZHI Intelligence at the end of November 2017.

The core team of the company all has PhDs and masters of engineering from 985 universities such as Shanghai Jiaotong University and Zhejiang University, as well as well-known universities at home and abroad such as the United States and Germany. 60% of the team members have master's and master's degrees. Most of the team members have worked in Fortune 500 companies such as FANUC, STEP, Honeywell, and Tesla, and have rich experience in R&D and management of intelligent robots and automation projects.

The experience of working at FANUC gave founder Zhang Jianzheng the idea of ​​starting a business. As one of the four major families of industrial robots, FANUC has been ranked first in the domestic industrial robot market share for many years, with a peak of nearly 20%, and annual revenue exceeding 500 billion yen. In June 2020, the cumulative number of FANUC robots installed worldwide exceeded 680,000, setting a new record for the global installation volume of a single brand of industrial robots.

The blockade of high-tech robots by overseas companies ignited Zhang Jianzheng's fighting spirit and made him determined to create a well-known national brand of robots. So at the end of 2017, Zhang Jianzheng founded Shanghai Sazhi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in "Zero Bay-Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Cluster".

Zhang Jianzheng once revealed that the turning point of the company occurred on New Year's Eve in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was severe. Some passengers on a plane that landed in Hangzhou had fever and needed to be isolated for observation. Zhang Jianzheng realized that this was an opportunity and the best opportunity to use robots to help humans. Soon after, a number of robots from SAZHI Intelligent for disinfection, medicine delivery, and temperature measurement were put into use in Shanghai isolation points. It was based on this that today's intelligent operation and maintenance product matrix was formed.

Today, the company has more than 150 intellectual property rights, with R&D accounting for more than 70%. The strong R&D capabilities have won the financial trust of VCs.

Conclusion

In recent years, autonomous mobility has become a hot concept. From larger robot taxis to unmanned forklifts for industrial handling scenarios, more and more billion-level financings have been generated. This niche track, which used to receive less attention, is expected to get a share of the pie in an era when hard-core technologies such as humanoid robots are booming.