36 Kr Guangdong was informed that recently, Shenzhen Camsense Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Camsense") announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan of B+ financing. Camsense's last round of financing took place at the beginning of this year, led by AVIC Pingshan Integrated Circuit Fund of 80 million yuan Yuan B round of financing.
This round of financing will be used for the development of new products of robots vacuum sensors, the construction of automated production lines and the recruitment of R&D talents. In the field of long-term products such as VR and industrial/medical, Camsense will also continue to invest in research and development to build the company's core technology barriers.
Christopher, the founder and CEO of Camsense said, "Although Camsense is favored by investment institutions, it is very cautious in selecting investors." Industry resource advantages will play an increasingly important role in the field of vision sensors, which can complement the technical advantages of Camsense.
From TVs to Robots Vacuum, Camsense grabs the consumer market
"Our positioning of the company's focus on visuospatial positioning sensors has remained the same."
Camsense was founded in 2014, when robots vacuum in the US market was still using random technology. Christopher said, "At that time, the application scenarios of spatial positioning technology were better in the field of TVs, such as the somatosensory camera of Microsoft Xbox." Therefore, Camsense chose to apply spatial positioning technology to the somatosensory camera to support the interaction between users and TV sets. , such as playing tennis, skipping rope and other games on the TV.
Due to the fact that TV industry developers use this technology as a value-added business, and the popularity of mobile Internet, TV shipments are declining year by year. Christopher also gradually realized that the market ceiling in this industry is not high.
Around 2017, Roborock Technology used lidar on robots vacuum as the "eyes" of robots vacuum. The Chinese robots vacuum market has begun to popularize the technology of technical planning routes. Christopher also observed: "Camsense's monocular vision lidar technology is applied to robots vacuum, which is more reliable than other solutions and can greatly reduce the cost." Since September 2017, Camsense officially launched Set up a project to study the application of lidar in robots vacuum. One year later, on "Double 11", Camsense officially successfully mass-produced and sold lidar products using monocular vision technology to robots vacuum manufacturers.
Today, lidar has gradually become the standard for home robots. Industry analysts of CITIC Securities believe that robots vacuum has ushered in the third round of technological dividends in 2020. Its technological innovation is the upgrade of autonomous obstacle avoidance and mopping functions, and this technology is the credit of lidar. Lidar technology is widely used in vehicles, industrial robots and household and consumer service robots, and the demand for Lidar shipments in consumer products is more than in other applications.
The chip industry is turbulent, and those who have the capacity will win the world
"This year will be a year of major reshuffles in the chip industry." Christopher said that for the electronics industry this year, the biggest issue is to ensure the continuous supply of the chip supply chain.
But Christopher believes that Camsense does not have the risk of wafer supply being cut off. Last year, Christopher had foreseen the crisis of this year's chips and placed millions of wafer production orders in advance.
Most of the sensor raw materials are gathered in the same supplier. For other lidar manufacturers, whoever can grab the supplier's production capacity will be able to continue to supply. But in the case of all out of stock, who can the supplier guarantee?
"Camsense has always built a differentiated product line with competing products in the industry." Christopher said that other companies in the industry generally provide the solution of linear array CMOS Sensor + general-purpose chip, while the solution provided by Camsense is widely used in mobile phones. The area array CMOS Sensor+ self-developed ASIC chip on the top of the company, and "the sensor shipments for mobile phones are large, and the cost is as low as 40%-50%."
According to Christopher, in the supply chain, Camsense does not use American products, but uses materials from Japan or South Korea, and most of the components have been localized.
Camsense takes algorithms as the threshold, and its customers are mainly robots vacuum brands with algorithm research and development capabilities, such as the robots vacuum brand "Dreame" of Xiaomi Ecological Chain, or solution providers with algorithm research and development capabilities. In the past two years, Camsense's shipment growth rate has reached 300%. "And, in May this year, shipments will exceed the figures of last year." The purpose of Camsense's last round of financing is to expand its line, and there are already two generations of it. A total of 4 production lines in the factory are producing Camsense products, and several new products will be launched in the second half of this year.
The investors are saying that:
"Choose Camsense, on the one hand, it has a unique way to innovate on the traditional triangulation method, and at the same time, it has developed its own chips, which solves the contradiction between high performance and reasonable price of lidar, and promotes the industry to make great strides forward. On the other hand, Camsense pays special attention to quality and has done a lot of work on the production system and quality management system. The product quality is very reliable and has been recognized by leading customers in the industry.”
"Since the first investment in Camsense in 2016, Dongfang Fuhai has continued to increase its investment, and this round has invested in Camsense for a total of 5 rounds. In five years, Camsense has become a leading supplier of robots vacuum lidar, and its product performance has been greatly improved. Widely recognized by customers, the monthly shipment exceeded 100,000 units. We believe that Camsense's success in the field of robots vacuum lidar is just the beginning of the company's large-scale development, and we are confident that the company will become a full-stack provider of service robot heads. "
