36Kr learned that Shanghai Jinghe Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jinghe Optoelectronics") has officially completed tens of millions of yuan A+ round of financing, and this round of financing is led by Baidu Venture Capital. It is reported that this round of financing is mainly used for technology research and development and the supplement of working capital.
At the same time, Jinghe Optoelectronics will open a new round of financing, and plans to start share reform in the first half of 2022 and apply for listing in 2023.
Founded in 2011, GMC Optoelectronics is an automotive LED module system solution provider, mainly with the main engine factory R & D design, production and creation of digital, intelligent lamps. At present, Jinghe Optoelectronics has core technologies in the fields of intelligent LED modules and lamp domain controllers, and is one of the few enterprises in the industry that have transformed towards intelligent lamps and successfully mass-produced smart lights on smart cars.
Source: Crystallized Optoelectronics
In the century-old history of the automobile industry, the development of car lamps has experienced halogen bulbs, xenon headlights, and LED light sources that are in the ascendant today. With the advent of the wave of intelligent electric vehicles, the main engine factory has put forward a new concept for the intelligentization of the whole vehicle, of course, the intelligent transformation of the lamp is also one of them.
However, before 2017, automotive lamps will still be a completely different industrial situation. Yu Tao, chairman of Jinghe Optoelectronics, told 36Kr: In 2017, the optical module market began to compete in white-hot, but the technical barriers to ordinary LED optical modules are not strong, so the industry generally wins the opportunity to get products on the car at a low price.
"The company was facing two directions of development at that time, the first was to go under the industry to do the assembly, further fight the price war with the industry, and the second was to take the road of scientific and technological research and development to further enhance the company's product line (core capabilities)."
Yu Tao believes that enterprises must go deep into the upstream of the industry and invest in technology research and development in order to break through the ceiling of enterprise development.
The first step for lamp module suppliers to go upstream of the car is to break through the development of traditional optical modules and evolve to digital intelligent optical modules.
He told 36Kr that the control of ordinary LED optical modules is very simple, only the two states of "on" and "off". But digital car lights, you may need to light one of the 100 LED lights alone.
This needs to be controlled by a digital program, so that each lamp becomes a pixel, so that the matrix expression of the lamp can form both a pattern and a text. The higher the degree of pixels of the lamp, the higher the degree of intelligence, which is also an important direction for the development of digital lamps in the future.
"So the capabilities of optical modules have changed from traditional modules to digital split control modules."
The second step, continuing to the upstream of intelligent optical modules, is a complex program software driver. Because the light source from the previous single point of light, to the matrix light, is bound to make the software drive more complex.
The third step is the field of the lamp domain controller with a higher degree of technical core. In the era of intelligent cars, the changes in headlights, early warnings, and entertainment function needs are constantly upgraded and amplified due to the overall intelligence of the car.
Yu Tao gave 36Kr a few examples: for example, if the vehicle is in a state of assisted driving, and the vehicle system issues instructions to turn left and change lanes, then the headlights need to be managed and directed by the domain controller of intelligent driving, and the "left turn light is on" action autonomously.
If at an intersection, the headlights of the vehicle may also need to be projected to warn or guide the pedestrians in front of them, giving a projection image of the lights such as zebra crossings. At the same time, in some specific scenarios, the headlights also assume the function of entertainment, such as farewell, greeting the owner mode lights;
It can be seen that the technical content of simple LED modules is actually not high, but going upstream to the industry, in-depth digital drive, ECU controller, not only the value chain of the lamp itself can be improved, but also the development of module companies has more imagination space.
According to relevant research report data, in the cost composition of LED lamps, the profit margin of LED chips, modules (optical) and controllers is relatively high, of which the cost of LED modules accounts for the largest proportion. For advanced LED headlamps (such as ADB, matrix headlights), optical modules and controllers usually account for more than 80%.
"Traditional optical module, a car's lighting headlights + taillights price is 1,000 yuan is not good, if it is a digital lamp, three or five thousand is possible." Yu Tao said.
Therefore, starting from 2017, Jinghe Optoelectronics began to establish relevant electronic drive and digital drive research and development departments and artificial intelligence departments, and gradually established the overall solution supply capacity of digital lamps and intelligent lights.
At present, GCC Optoelectronics can provide a full set of software and hardware products and services for optical modules, drivers, and domain controller ECUs. According to the company, in terms of hardware, the company has the production capacity of matrix ADB front light source board.
At the software level, the team is gradually establishing hundreds or even thousands of channel drive design capabilities, laying the foundation for the digital upgrading of pixel-level lamps. The current mass-produced lamp module can control hundreds of LED channels, each channel is independently controlled by the CAN/LIN bus and domain controller, realizing the transformation of complex images, and participating in assisted driving and interacting with human-machine in driving.
In addition, the company has also set up a V2X intelligent interaction department to independently develop a lamp domain controller and support the lamp FOTA software upgrade;
"Three things done together, we are able to provide a full range of services. It is equivalent to being able to intervene in the research and development of the vehicle from the early design of the headlights, and synchronize the design and production with the main engine factory, instead of bidding everywhere as before, holding the plan to bid for promotion, and breaking the blood flow for a bid. ”
Intervene in the vehicle research and development process in advance and provide more competitive technical support, "so that Jinghe Optoelectronics can form a new triangular production relationship with the main engine factory and the lamp factory in the research and development of the vehicle." Although Jinghe Optoelectronics is still the role of Tier 2.
It is understood that the intelligent lamp module products of Jinghe Optoelectronics have now achieved large-scale front-loading mass production, entering Xiaopeng, BYD, FAW Hongqi, GAC Aian and other car companies, and a variety of models cooperated with WM, Nezha and Gaohe are about to be mass-produced.
But as Yu Tao said: technology research and development drives product development, and then it also brings a "sweet burden". That is to say, enterprises need to maintain long-term and powerful operation, if they cannot form a steady supply of new technology products, then they will face the problem of stagnation in development.
Therefore, how to maintain a long-term "technical ammunition output" is a problem that Jinghe Optoelectronics is solving in the future.
At present, Jinghe Optoelectronics is conducting research on ADB headlights (matrix matrix LED module), pixel screen module, and car projection scheme lamps; in addition, its self-developed 100-pixel ADB headlight module has also been made into samples, benchmarking the Mercedes-Benz S-class 84-pixel ADB headlights of international car companies.
Although the current matrix headlight market penetration rate is not too high, Yu Tao believes that under the impetus of automotive intelligence, intelligent lamps still contain a very large market size. CICC released a research report in November that the total value of the global lamp market is expected to expand to 400 billion yuan in 2026.
In addition, Jinghe Optoelectronics cooperated with the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering and Automation of Shanghai University to jointly establish the "OLED Automotive Industry Application Joint Laboratory" with the New Display Laboratory Luminescence and Optoelectronic Research Center. With the support of Shanghai University's industry-university-research technology, Jinghe Optoelectronics has completed the patent layout of OLED in the application of automotive lamps and lanterns, completed the trial production and verification of laboratory samples, and has purchased the equipment required for trial production, and plans to form industrialization in the next step.
In this round of financing, the addition of Baidu Venture Capital, while bringing endorsements to Internet technology enterprises for Jinghe Optoelectronics, it can also provide financial support in technology research and development and talent recruitment.
In response to this round of financing, Wang Zheng, vice president of Baidu Venture Capital Investment, said: "In the fierce competition of new energy vehicles, consumers' purchase demands have changed from functional guarantee to personalized display, and smart LED lights have become key high-value components of automobiles with personalized, informational and safety functions. With the rapid transformation and upgrading of headlights to intelligence, the value of the lamp module industry continues to enlarge, which is "an important support behind the golden track". This is also the fundamental reason why we are firmly optimistic about Jinghe Optoelectronics. ”