Source丨IT orange
Author丨Fok Yingxian
Editor丨Wu Meimei
Cover image courtesy of Pexels
New materials are undoubtedly one of the hot investment themes in the capital market in the past two years. New materials refer to materials with excellent performance and function, covering high-performance structural materials, advanced functional materials, biomedical materials, intelligent manufacturing materials and other fields, regarded as the forerunner of the era of hard technology, and its development largely determines a country's scientific and technological competitiveness. Today, with the continuous evolution of the global economic pattern, the new materials industry, as an important part of the national strategic emerging industries, plays a vital role in the development of a new generation of information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing, new energy and new energy vehicles and other strategic emerging industries. Despite the lack of confidence in the primary market and the overall slowdown in the pace of investment in 2023, the new materials industry still shows strong development potential and attractiveness, and the market is still hot. The following IT orange will take stock of the unicorns in the domestic new material industry in 2023. This article is excerpted from the "2023-2024 China New Materials Industry Investment and Financing Analysis Report", and the analysis of the investment and financing data will continue to be released on the IT Orange official account, so stay tuned.
According to statistics, there are 7 unicorns on the list in the new materials industry in 2023, of which two companies will be on the list in 2021, 3 companies will be on the list in 2022, and 2 companies will be newly on the list in 2023.
With its R&D strength in the field of electrochromic technology, Lenright Technology was listed on the list of new material unicorns in November 2021, and it is also the earliest new material unicorn company in China. In terms of valuation, Pilot Film topped the list with its latest valuation of $2.769 billion. Pilot Film, a subsidiary of Pioneer Group, is engaged in the research and development, production, sales and recycling of sputtering targets and evaporation materials for vacuum coatings. The company was established in July 2017, received an angel round of investment from Hefei Industrial Investment in December of that year, and was promoted to a unicorn after receiving a B round investment of 4.5 billion yuan in 2022. In terms of the number of financings, Tongguang Co., Ltd. and Blue Crystal Microorganisms are ahead of other unicorn companies with 8 rounds of financing respectively, showing their continued attractiveness in the capital market, and these two companies are also new unicorns in 2023.
- 2023 case study of unicorns in China's new materials industry
Hebei new material unicorn "Tongguang shares": Tongguang shares, the full name of Hebei Tongguang Semiconductor Co., Ltd., is located in Baoding High-tech Zone, Hebei Province, in recent years, ushered in rapid development, from a little-known enterprise to become a new unicorn in the field of third-generation semiconductor materials in China. Since its establishment in 2012, Tongguang has focused on the R&D and production of silicon carbide (SiC) materials, and has completed 8 rounds of financing. The company's core product, silicon carbide wafer, is a new type of semiconductor material, which has significant advantages in high frequency, high efficiency and high voltage resistance. With the growing domestic demand for the localization and substitution of emerging technologies, the third-generation semiconductor materials represented by silicon carbide have received great attention from downstream customers, industrial capital and local governments in the industrial chain, and have broad market prospects. In 2016, Tongguang Co., Ltd. received an exclusive angel round investment from Agricultural Development Focus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Agricultural Development Bank, which laid a solid foundation for its subsequent development. In December 2020, Tongguang Co., Ltd. completed Series A and B rounds of financing within one month, the A round was jointly invested by SDIC Venture Capital and Xiaomi Group, and the B round was exclusively invested by Kunlun Capital. In 2021, Tongguang's financing pace was more compact, and 4 financings were completed during the year. In January, the C round of financing was completed, led by CPE Yuanfeng, followed by the old shareholder Kunlun Capital; In May, it received Series D financing, which was jointly invested by 6 institutions, including Haolan Capital, BAIC Industrial Investment and Yunhui Capital; In July, it once again obtained hundreds of millions of yuan in pre-IPO financing, with the participation of many investment institutions such as Red Horse Capital, Inovance Industrial Investment, and Lianxin Capital, and the old shareholder CPE Yuanfeng Investment continued to increase its weight. In December of the same year, Great Wall Motor, a local auto giant in Baoding, also joined the investment ranks, led by Great Wall Motors and followed by Junxi Capital. By December 2023, Tongguang Co., Ltd. completed a super financing of 1.5 billion yuan. The financing was led by Shenzhen Capital Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading New Materials Fund and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Collaborative Development Industrial Investment Fund, and jointly invested by Baoding High-tech Zone Venture Capital Co., Ltd. and Hebei Industrial Investment Zhan New Industry Development Center, with a post-investment valuation of 7.5 billion yuan, and was successfully promoted to a unicorn enterprise. Founded in October 2016, Bluepha is an innovative company focusing on synthetic biotechnology. The company is committed to the development and commercialization of novel bio-based molecules and materials, including PHA materials with autonomously complete degradation properties, functional beverage ingredients for anxiety relief, and novel probiotics to supplement the body's metabolism. These innovative products enable Blue Crystal Microbes to provide a unique competitive advantage to corporate customers in a variety of industries, including consumer goods, healthcare, agriculture, environmental protection, and electrical and electronics. IT orange data shows that since its establishment, Blue Crystal Microbiology has completed 8 rounds of financing, with a total of more than 2 billion yuan of financing disclosed, and investors include top institutions such as Tencent and Hillhouse, as well as national teams such as the National Mixed Reform Fund. Especially after 2021, with the rise of investment boom in the field of synthetic biology, Blue Crystal Microbiology has accelerated the pace of financing, and has completed three rounds of Series B financing one after another, with a cumulative financing amount of 1.5 billion yuan, of which the B1 round of financing is nearly 200 million yuan, the B2 round of financing is 430 million yuan, and the B3 round of financing is jointly led by Yuansheng Capital and China State-owned Enterprise Mixed Ownership Reform Fund (Mixed Ownership Reform Fund), with an amount of 870 million yuan. With more than 100 million yuan of financing in a short period of time, Blue Crystal Microorganism has properly become the "darling" of the capital market. The success of this series of financing not only provides sufficient financial support for Blue Crystal Microorganism, but also provides a solid foundation for it to leapfrog the "valley of death" from laboratory R&D to industrial mass production. The company's R&D infrastructure, Synbio OS (Synthetic Biology Operating System), extends the DBTL closed loop of synthetic biology from the laboratory to the industrial level, significantly improving the efficiency of technology development and product delivery. In 2023, Blue Crystal Microbiology will launch the B4 round of financing again, successfully raising more than 400 million yuan, led by Zhongping Capital, followed by Jiangsu Huanghai Financial Holding Group (Huanghai Financial Holdings), and Mingde Capital serves as the exclusive financial advisor for this equity financing. The post-investment valuation reached 7.5 billion yuan, and Blue Crystal Microbes was promoted to a unicorn. Although the overall investment in the domestic primary market will slow down in 2023, the overall popularity of synthetic biology has been increasing. WeChat has been revised again, and if you don't mark the star, it's easy to miss our push, and you can't see the cover picture. 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