On December 14, 2021, the fourth-generation mobile robot leader, RewardX Robotics (hereinafter referred to as "Lingdong Technology"), announced the completion of a Series C financing with a financing amount of nearly 200 million yuan, led by Taikang Life, followed by Haochen Capital and Qualcomm Venture Capital.
After this round of financing, the cumulative financing amount of Lingdong Technology in 2021 exceeded 400 million yuan, and the total cumulative financing in history exceeded 100 million US dollars, ranking among the best in the track.
As the leader of the fourth generation of mobile robots, in August 2020, Agile Technology officially released the fourth generation of mobile robot V-AMR. This is not only the only AMR in the world that adopts computer vision multi-sensor fusion solutions, which can massively cluster scheduling, independent planning routes, 360° obstacle avoidance and rapid adaptation to changes in the layout of complex environments, but also represents that the entire mobile robot industry has crossed the technology gap and officially moved towards the era of the fourth generation of mobile robots.
Throughout the development process of mobile robots, the first generation of rail robots in China is 30 years late, the second generation of two-dimensional code robots in China is 11 years late, the third generation of laser AMR is still far from foreign products, and the fourth generation of visual AMR robots with the help of deep learning technology in the rapid development of the country, finally achieved anti-overtaking, is currently in a global leading position.
Up to now, in the field of the fourth generation of visual AMR mobile robots, Agile Technology is the only company in the world to achieve mass production.
In other words, whether in terms of technology or commercialization, As a To B enterprise, Agile Technology has undoubtedly been in a leading position in the market, providing professional mobile robot solutions for hundreds of leading enterprises in the industry at home and abroad. It is not difficult to understand why Lingdong Technology has always been recognized by investors and set a record for the amount of financing for mobile robot tracks in the third generation and after three generations.
It is reported that the current round of financing of Lingdong Technology will be mainly used for new product research and development, supply chain deployment, commercial delivery and overseas market scale expansion.
In a year, it has won 2 rounds of 100 million financing, and the cumulative financing amount has reached a new high on the track
If you use two words to describe the financing process of Lingdong Technology, one is fast and the other is stable.
CVSource investment data shows that since the start of financing in January 2017, Lingdong Technology has basically maintained a financing rhythm of 1 year and 2 rounds. Even during the epidemic in 2020, the financing progress of Lingdong Technology was not affected, and all the transaction documents were signed in half a year.
And this time financing, Lingdong Technology still deduces such a "pace" - this is the second financing of Lingdong Technology in 2021, and it is only more than half a year from the last round of 250 million yuan Pre-C round won in March 2021.
For this financing, in addition to the company's own solid and stable technical and commercialization strength, Zi Ou, founder and CEO of Lingdong Technology, mentioned more about the industry consensus of the capital market on the current trend of "machine substitution". Especially with the increasing maturity of technology, coupled with the weakening of the demographic dividend, the inflection point of robot costs lower than that of labor is coming, and the domestic robot track has entered a golden period of development.
"Reflected in our clients, the aging population and the reduction of the willingness of a new generation of young people to engage in highly repetitive and mechanical labor have forced the logistics industry and manufacturing industry to face difficulties in recruiting workers and the problem of expensive employment." For example, manufacturing customers will face a turnover rate of more than 10% per year, a large labor gap, and high labor costs. At this time, the advantages of robots are reflected, and while supplementing the labor gap, it can also help enterprises reduce costs and better adapt to industrial intelligent upgrading. Zio said.
In the field of logistics, the intelligent empowerment level and flexible deployment ability of Lingdong Technology Visual AMR have been verified. For the logistics industry, Lingdong Technology has created a unique "Pick2Go" human-machine collaboration flexible picking solution, which can cover the widest range of warehouse types, achieve "traceless deployment, zero cost migration, adaptive business, one-minute start-up", with half the investment to bring twice the picking efficiency improvement, to achieve double improvement in human efficiency and efficiency. Up to now, the "Pick2Go" flexible picking solution of Lingdong Technology has deployed nearly 1,000 AMRs, launched 50+ warehouses, and increased the picking efficiency by 50%-200%.
During the double 11 period in 2021, Lingdong Technology AMR helped a global head e-commerce warehouse to increase the production capacity by up to 400%, UPPH increased by 133% compared with usual, and UPPH reached more than 450 pieces/hour during the peak period of a water drinking warehouse, which was 6 times higher than manual operation, creating world-class performance.
For the manufacturing industry, the end-to-end solution provided by Lingdong Technology can provide customers with the practical value of "cost reduction and efficiency increase", and better adapt to the flexible upgrading of the industry.
It is reported that compared with the traditional AGV, the safety and reliability of the AmR of Lingdong Technology is higher, and the trouble-free traffic rate can reach 99.5%. Moreover, the flexible AMR has visual perception capabilities, which can realize man-machine mixed travel, and achieve three-dimensional obstacle avoidance and motion obstacle avoidance. This allows the robot to operate with minimal human intervention and increased productivity. For example, in the Dongfeng passenger car project, Agile Technology has helped enterprises achieve a 50% increase in efficiency and save millions of manpower every year.
Through the transportation management of the whole operation process such as all-scenario multi-model hybrid scheduling, a set of systems from raw material storage, picking, on-line, production line docking, and outbound storage, Agile AMR can also realize the dataization of the whole process of materials, help enterprises optimize material and capital turnover, achieve intelligent decision-making, support the intelligent upgrading and digital transformation of in-plant logistics, including the transformation of old factories, and provide a reliable basis for subsequent digital twins and further improvement of production efficiency.
The world's leading mobile robot common software platform, delivery can be completed as soon as one week
Focusing on the company side, the reason why Agile Technology occupies a leading position in the entire mobile robot industry is that a very low-level reason is that Agile Technology has built a world-leading mobile robot general software platform with innovation and differentiation.
The platform is based on The robot perception decision-making platform based on deep learning (single intelligence) and the multi-agent scheduling system based on machine learning (cluster scheduling) developed by Agile Technology, which makes Lingdong Technology a leading Chinese enterprise with AMR large-scale cross-industry scheduling capabilities, forming a unique technical barrier. Through this software platform, Lingdong Technology AMR realizes the rapid replication of multiple complex scenarios across different industries such as logistics, manufacturing, and retail.
In simple terms, Agile AMR can use a set of software platforms to achieve cross-industry, multi-scenario multiplexing, and 80% of the code does not need to be repeatedly developed.
It is also based on this software platform that the commercialization of Agile Technology has accelerated its landing, and its large-scale delivery capabilities have continued to improve, and it has become the enterprise with the largest shipment volume, the most coverage industry and the widest landing scenario in the field of mobile robots of three generations and more.
Up to now, Agile Technology has served a number of leading enterprises in the industry, including JD Logistics, Dongfeng Passenger Vehicle, BAIC Group, TCL, SF Supply Chain China, etc., with a repurchase rate of 100%, and has become the only robot partner strictly selected by Huawei.
Not only domestic customers, but also overseas customers are constantly seeking cooperation with Smart Technology. According to Ziou, Lingdong Technology will receive orders from Japan, the United States, South America, Europe and other countries or regions every day, "2/3 is to write an email to the official website, or call our official phone." At the same time, the branches of Lingdong Technology in the United States and Japan have been established, and the achievements of global expansion will further appear.
It is worth mentioning that another reason why overseas customers especially favor Agile Technology is that in the solutions of medium and small piece warehouses of e-commerce, Agile Technology also has the ability of global leading innovation.
As many people may know, in the logistics industry, the robot solution of the middle part warehouse is a global problem. Lingdong Technology spent two years with a global head e-commerce company to explore the world's first application form of AMR in the middle parts warehouse, and has entered the stage of large-scale promotion. This means that China's e-commerce logistics companies and China's robot companies have explored the world's leading robot solutions.
With the increase of orders, the delivery capacity of Agile Technology is also constantly breaking through. During the "618" period in 2021, the world's leading e-commerce company placed 6 more orders in 14 days, deployed nearly 100 AMRs, and Agile Technology completed all deliveries within 2-4 weeks; on the eve of Double 11, a warehouse of the company achieved delivery within 1 week. According to Zio, today, the AMR solution of Lingdong Technology has been copied in the company's 20+ different types of warehouses within a year.
If the results are put ahead, why did Agile Technology pioneer the creation of a common software platform for mobile robots at the beginning to continue to lead the industry in the next development?
This is related to Ziou's past experience. Prior to founding Agile Technology, Zio was the former Head of Oracle's SaaS Cloud Computing Core Product Line in China and a global product manager at former SAP, with high software architecture capabilities. Moreover, he is also the former Winner of the Asia-Pacific University Robot Competition in China.
Zio knows that "the winning point of robots to the end must be software." The most critical thing in complex and large-scale software development is architecture design, followed by the choice of technical route. ”
Organizational ability is indispensable, and 3-5 head companies will run out in the future
Although at present, at both the end of technology and commercialization, Smart Technology is undoubtedly the frontrunner. However, from the perspective of the development cycle of the entire industry and the company, Lingdong Technology is still facing huge growth space in the future.
"At present, the market share of the entire industry is not high." Zio said that today's robot purchases are enterprise-level purchases. In the long run, the purchase of robots should be a department-level purchase, or even an engineer-level purchase. Robot deployments will also become more flexible, optimized, accessible, and easier to migrate.
According to the "2021-2026 China Autonomous Mobile Robot AMR Industry Application Market Demand and Development Opportunity Research Report", according to the current AMR industry development trend, it is expected that by 2023, the global AMR market size will reach about 10 billion yuan, and its growth is mainly driven by the Chinese and American markets. It is expected that in the next five years, China will contribute nearly 35% of its revenue.
In the face of the robot market with great potential, more and more players have poured into this track, including some technology giants Hikvision and Kuangshi Technology have also come to grab the beach.
In Ziou's view, around 2025, the AMR robot market will see a clear number of leading seats, and eventually 3-5 companies will run out. So, in the fierce competition, what type of enterprises will grow into the head of the industry?
Zio mentioned three key points. "The first is strong organizational ability; the second is that the technology is thick and commercially robust; the third is to position itself internationally and land on a global scale." The reason why organizational ability is put first is because in Ziou's view, the essence of the company's business is the scale effect, and the premise of achieving the scale effect is the organizational effect.
"In particular, mobile robot companies have relatively high business complexity and job complexity. The business operation of this industry should draw two circles, the first is the circle from technology to product, and the second is the circle from product to commercialization to customer benefits. To draw these two circles well, a largest common divisor is needed to ensure rhythm and speed. ”
Any innovation and new business development is actually an overflow of organizational capabilities, and the biggest advantage of Lingdong Technology's organizational capabilities lies in the maturity of the team itself, the core team members from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Huawei, Didi, McKinsey, SF, etc., basically ran through the complete business closed loop, a keener sense of smell for various opportunities and challenges, more mature processing. In the past two years, Lingdong Technology has absorbed many core talents from the technical teams such as JD.com and Cainiao, and its research and development strength and organizational capabilities have been further strengthened.
For the higher dimension of global market competition, Lingdong Technology will focus on cultivating its own "internal strength". "Lingdong Technology is the world's fastest growing visual navigation mobile robot enterprise, committed to becoming the world's largest and most valuable mobile robot platform, making mobile robots a new productive force and unleashing human creativity." Zio said, "It is not so much about competition, but about agile technology to achieve high-quality and large-scale delivery capabilities in globalization." ”
Wei Wei, director of Taikang Asset Investment, said: "With the continuous rise of labor costs and the gradual maturity of AI technology, the trend of machine substitution is becoming more and more obvious, especially in the field of warehousing and handling with high labor intensity and single labor form. Lingdong team research and development capabilities are outstanding, product competitiveness is strong, has been recognized by the industry's leading customers and large-scale application, its vision-based four-generation robot products can adapt to high complexity of the dynamic environment, wide application prospects, Taikang is optimistic about the development potential of Lingdong, and Taikang also has a wide layout in the field of warehousing and logistics, I believe there will be many opportunities for in-depth cooperation in the future. ”
Mr. Tang Tao, Managing Partner of Haochen Capital, said: "Qi Ou, the founder of Lingdong Technology, led the team to pioneer AMR (Autonomous Mobile Robot) products in the domestic logistics scene, and defined the AMR industry standard for logistics and manufacturing, which has a unique generation difference advantage in technology. After 4 years of scene solution accumulation and systematic research and development precipitation, Lingdong Technology has established the core ability to use 'one' general technology platform to quickly output 'multiple' products, and entered the fast lane of large-scale replication of large-scale scenes in 2021.
In the future, every year on Double 11, each of our e-commerce packages may be selected by the agile robot; the connection of various raw materials and parts on the manufacturing production line may be transported by the agile robot. Agile technology will gradually become one of the indispensable productive forces in logistics and manufacturing scenarios. ”
Tang Tao, as one of the earliest investors of Agile Technology, said: "We have repeatedly added bets on Lingdong Technology, continue to be optimistic about the Lingdong Technology team, and hope to continue to accompany the company's growth and contribute to the upgrading of the industry's scientific and technological productivity." ”
Shen Jin, Global Vice President of Qualcomm and Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures, said: "The e-commerce revolution is driving the demand for more intelligent warehouse automation tools. "Agile Vision AMR solutions help improve operational efficiency and reliability. We are excited to invest in and support Agile Technologies in leveraging AI to optimize warehousing and manufacturing environments and drive 5G private network applications." (Text/Ma Mujie, Source/Zhongzhong.com)