Jason Wu Intelligently completed the A round of financing and led the investment in GQY video boss's "Old Wine in New Bottles" Capital Bureau.

Science and Technology Innovation Board News (Reporter Chen Mei) The robot field has never lacked the attention of capital.

According to Jingfu data, Shanghai Jason Wu Intelligent recently completed the A round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan, with Oriental Fuhai as the lead investor. The reporter inquired that Jason Wu Intelligent was founded on 20 19, and it was located by robot and artificial intelligence technology.

Unfortunately, the predecessor of this robot company is the robot business group of GQY Video (300076), a listed company. In other words, Jason Wu Intelligence is separated from GQY video. Most importantly, the boss of this company is Guo, the former actual controller of GQY video.

Guo has cashed in over 6543.8+0 billion in GQY video in 9 years. 10 6 13, the reporter called the GQY video director's office, and its staff confirmed that GQY video had completed the divestiture of the robot business, starting from 20 16. As for the reasons for the divestiture, the staff member said frankly: "The robot business does not make money."

The predecessor of Jason Wu Intelligence didn't make money.

As a popular track, the investment and financing in the robot field still shows a high growth trend. Dr Li Junchao, the capital investment manager of Yunxiu, told the reporter, "The number of robots will definitely be large in the future, which will exceed the global population. There are many main chips and sensor chips inside. "

But as far as Jason Wu Intelligence is concerned, although the company laid out the robot field earlier, it has never made any money. This can be seen from the annual report of GQY Video.

The 20 16 annual report shows that GQY video has strategically upgraded its main business modules, forming two categories: "AR-VIS" and "intelligent robot". Among them, the main company of intelligent robot business is Shanghai New Century Robot.

According to the survey, this company was founded on 20 10, and 20 14 received the A round of financing, and the investor was GQY Video. In the introduction of fund-raising projects in that year, GQY Video landed on the Growth Enterprise Market on 20 10, and actually raised 8 10/00000 yuan, of which about 542 million yuan was over-raised, and the balance of funds raised by June 30, 20 14 was 6170000 yuan.

For the raised balance of 600 million yuan, Guo, then the actual controller of GQY Video, said that this 600 million yuan will be used for investment in production and mergers and acquisitions in the robot industry.

However, from high-tech to business stripping from the market, GQY video's collapse in the robot business is very rapid.

The annual report of 20 15 shows that the inventory of GQY video robot related industries is 93, which is 72.22% higher than that of 54 when it was announced to enter the robot industry in 20 14.

However, in 20 15, GQY Video signed 1000 sets of "anti-terrorism robot" intelligent single police and mobile police platform products, with a total contract amount of 65 million yuan. Due to the poor implementation effect in that year, the implementation process of the sales contract with Zhejiang Trade was greatly delayed due to the influence of the examination and approval process of end customers' procurement and the further optimization and improvement of products.

This means that GQY video, the robot business, developed unfavorably as soon as it started.

In 20 16, the output of GQY video robot related industries 164, only 38 sets were sold, and the inventory reached 127. Compared with 20 15 years, the data fluctuated sharply, being 100%, -53.09% and 126% respectively. At the same time, in 20 16, the income of robot-related industries was only 2.042 million yuan, accounting for 1. 19% of the total income.

From 20 17 to 20 18, the sales volume of GQY video in intelligent robots is only 24 and 107, and the corresponding output is 35 and 1 16. Not to mention that in 20 19 -2020, the sales volume will be 7 and 5 respectively, and GQY Video will no longer produce robots in 2020.

In this regard, the staff of GQY Video Secretary Office told reporters that this is because the robot business has been divested.

It is worth mentioning that when Shanghai New Era sought financing, according to the disclosed feasibility study report, it was predicted at that time that the sales revenue of the investment project 20 15 20 19 would reach 256 10 billion yuan, and the corresponding net profit was 320 million yuan. However, compared with the actual situation in Shanghai in the new period, the two are far from each other.

Is there a core technology?

Except that GQY video robot business, the predecessor of Jason Wu Intelligent, is not profitable, the market is more concerned about why this business is not profitable.

You know, around 20 15 is the most prosperous time for investment and financing in the robot field. According to the data of CB Insights, there were 83 financing transactions in the robot field in 20 15 years, almost twice as many as 45 in 20 14 years. Meanwhile, the investment increased by 1 15%.

Since so many institutions are optimistic about the robot field, the rich GQY video has also invested real money, but why did the robot business finally emerge?

The reporter saw that among the robot companies involved in GQY video, Shanghai New Century was introduced as follows: the company has 108 patents, and it is a new technology enterprise with completely independent intellectual property rights and the core technology of intelligent balance control system.

However, the 20 16 annual report revealed that Shanghai New Age Robot, as a subsidiary at that time, was funded by Shanghai Science and Technology Commission for "Research on Key Technologies and Applications of Heavy Robots Based on Series-Parallel-Series" 1.2 million yuan. Unfortunately, as of 20 18 12 3 1, the acceptance of this project has not been completed.

Similarly, in August of 20 17, Shanghai New Age Robot, a subsidiary, also received a subsidy of120,000 yuan from the "Vehicle Self-balancing Rescue Platform" of Minhang District Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai. But as of 20 18 12 3 1, the acceptance of this project has not been completed.

In other words, the "intelligent robot" business, which had high hopes, did not complete GQY video and the expectations of the actual controller Guo at that time, but ended up with the project not yet completed and accepted.

On the other hand, in the 20 18 annual report, GQY Video also disclosed invention patents, including 6 applications accepted and 2 design patents authorized. The service robot has obtained national certificates such as 3C and CR certification.

What are 3C and CR certifications? The reporter found that 3C certification refers to China's compulsory product certification, which is a product conformity assessment system implemented by the Chinese government in accordance with laws and regulations to protect national security and personal safety of consumers and strengthen product quality management.

As for CR certification, it is not compulsory certification. The significance of certification is to ensure that the safety and performance of robots meet the national standards. "Many scientific research projects, government procurement projects and large-scale end-user projects need to use products with certification guarantee, so robots are required to have CR certification as the threshold for bidding." A person in the robot industry said.

However, even with the certification of these two basic thresholds, the road of GQY video in robot business is not as smooth as expected. The most embarrassing thing is that on July 4th, 2065438, GQY Video signed 1000 "anti-terrorism robots" with Shang Tong, Zhejiang Province, involving an amount of 65 million yuan. Due to the modification of the order by the actual customer, the price change in the commodity market and the failure of Party A's sales model to be recognized by the market, the contract was postponed. ...

Guo Xin bottled old wine?

The actual controller of GQY Video 20 19 is to be changed to Kaifeng Municipal Government, and its financial control technology has paid 800 million yuan for the transfer. At the time of transfer, GQY Video transferred Ningbo Qikewei Intelligent Technology, Ningbo GQY Automation System Integration and Shanghai New Age Robot to Guo and Yuan Xiangyang.

Since intelligence was separated from GQY video, Guo Xin's intelligence is old wine in new bottles. In the field of robotics, what is the current research and development of this technology?

Bu Rixin, a partner of Chuangdao Investment Consulting, said in an interview that China's service robots are still in the early stage, and there is still a long way to go for the industry to mature and popularize. "Some sub-industries, such as sweeping robots and educational robots in home services, have gradually been accepted by the market because of their strong consumer electronics attributes, while commercial service robots, because of their strong toB attributes, are recognized by the market depending on whether they can solve the real needs of B-end customers."

Therefore, in Bu Rixin's view, it is still in the stage of "early adopters", and the overall demand has yet to be verified by the market.

As for the technical level, Bu Rixin believes that AI technologies matching service robots are basically mature, such as AI image recognition, speech semantic recognition, SLAM environment construction, lidar and so on. These are not real obstacles to the popularization of service robots. The technical strength of most enterprises can also integrate these technologies into robots.

"The biggest problem with service robots is practicality. If you just stay in the early adoption stage, you can attract users' attention in a short time, but it is not very attractive in the long run. For example, most hotel delivery robots need manual intervention, such as goods selection and delivery, manual setting and so on. , did not significantly improve work efficiency. "Bu Rixin said that the development of service robots needs to be combined with business model innovation to achieve the purpose of improving efficiency, reducing costs and increasing revenue, so that owners can really have the motivation to deploy on a large scale.

Lu, director of the Institute of Robotics Industry, also pointed out in an interview that since the outbreak, China's service robots have entered a period of rapid development, especially the service robots on the toB track. Distribution robot is one of the typical scenes and popular racetracks, and has entered the stage of rapid industrialization.

"From a technical point of view, a service robot can be understood as an organic combination of hardware and software. Hardware level, such as lidar, sensor, chip, etc. Mainly outsourcing, foreign capital occupies a strong dominant position. " Lu said that most robot manufacturers now pay more attention to software technologies, such as controller algorithms, vision algorithms and human-computer interaction systems.

"But the technology at the software level needs long-term iteration and optimization. This process needs to be tested in a typical scenario. The process of verification, feedback and optimization is not achieved overnight. " Lu believes that at the same time, it is necessary to consider the mutual cooperation and coordination between hardware and software, especially in relatively complex scenes, the technical gap can be more reflected.

Therefore, in Lu's view, the gap of robot enterprises is still very large. "This gap requires continuous R&D investment and time accumulation and iteration. In the field of robotics, the best destination of any sophisticated technology is to let it return to the industry, return to the scene, and innovate value in applications, rather than pure technology. Hey! "

In this context, Oriental Fuhai invested nearly 100 million yuan in Jason Wu Intelligent. Bu Rixin believes that corporate financing and valuation depend on the future growth space and market scale, giving a higher valuation shows that investment institutions are optimistic about this industry, but there is also the possibility of misjudgment by investment institutions.