The country encourages the use of advanced technology to enhance efficiency on the production floor, which has led to industrial robotic being one of the hottest tech sectors in China.
The latest industrial robot maker from China to get funded is VisionNav Robotics, which specializes in autonomously stacking vehicles and other logistics robots. The Shenzhen-based automated guided vehicle (AGV) startup has secured 500 million yuan from a Series C extension round led by Meituan, China's food delivery giant, and 5Y Capital, a prominent venture capital firm in the country. IDG, TikTok's parent firm ByteDance, andXiaomi founder Lei Jun joined the round.
A group of PhDs from the University of Tokyo and the Chinese University of Hong Kong founded the company in 2016 and have since raised over $500 million.
VisionNav will be able to invest in R&D and broaden its use cases with the new funding.
The key piece in adding new categories is to train and improve the startup's software, less so developing new hardware, said the firm's vice president of global sales.
The biggest challenge for robots is to effectively perceive and navigate the world around them. The problem with a camera-powered self-drive solution is that it can be easily affected by bright light. Lidar was too expensive for mass adoption a few years ago, but has seen its price slashed substantially by Chinese players.
We used to provide mostly indoor solutions. We are going to be operating in strong light now that we are expanding. We are adapting a combination of vision and radar technologies to navigate our robots.
VisionNav sees Pittsburg-based Seegrid and France-based Balyo as its international rivals but believes it has a price advantage because it is in China. The startup is sending robots to clients in Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Netherlands, the UK, and Hungary. It is in the process of setting up subsidiaries in Europe and the US.
Data compliance in foreign markets is simpler because the startup doesn't collect detailed customer information. In the next few years, it is expected to derive 50-60% of its revenues abroad. The US is one of its main target markets, as the forklift industry there is more profitable than that of China, despite having a smaller number of forklift vehicles.
VisionNav pulled in between 200 million and 250 million dollars last year. It currently operates a team of around 400 people across China and is expected to reach 1,000 staff this year by hiring aggressively overseas.
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