Text | Zheng Cancheng
Editor | Peng Xiaoqiu
36 Krypton learned exclusively that Shenzhen Fushi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Fushi Technology”) has recently completed several hundred million yuan in the C1 round of financing. This round of financing is led by Chengdu Science and Technology Venture Capital, and other investors include BAIC Industrial Investment, Huiyou Capital, Shenzhong Investment, Jiufei Te, Zhuhai Hi-Tech Venture Capital, Suzhou Intelligent Vehicle Network Investment, Shanghai International Venture Capital and other industrial investment institutions , The raised funds are mainly used for the research and development of lidar core chips.
“Fushi Technology” was established in 2017. It is a company that 36 Krypton has been following for a long time, focusing on the research and development of machine vision products. At present, three major product lines of lidar SPAD, 3D vision and off-screen optics have been formed.
The new business focus of this round of financing is the lidar SPAD chip. In 2019, after completing the preliminary research and development of 3D structured light and binoculars, “Fushi Technology” established an internal research institute to lay out the research and development of lidar chips; in 2021, the single-point SPAD chip was successfully put into production; According to the customized contract of LiDAR manufacturers, the LiDAR receiving sensor chip has officially passed the AEC-Q102 automotive standard certification and started batch delivery. This chip is used in the field of pan-autonomous driving as an application scenario. It has recently passed customer verification and is expected to enter the car next year.
From the technical route point of view, there are three main solutions for autonomous driving: vision (equipped with a camera), millimeter-wave radar and lidar. Compared with visual recognition and millimeter-wave radar, the advantage of lidar is that it can measure the distance from the time of laser emission to reception, and is not limited by conditions such as illumination. In scenes with insufficient light such as strong and weak light changes in and out of tunnels, backlighting, rainy days, and dark nights, or scenes where the visual recognition algorithm is not trained, lidar has higher stability and reliability, and is also considered to be the trend of automatic driving. The key link of L4. Even if it is applied to assisted driving, lidar can greatly improve safety and is favored by users.
But at present, the widespread application of lidar in autonomous driving is still subject to high costs. 36 Krypton learned that in the earliest days, a complete lidar machine cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the cost was almost equivalent to that of a car. The high cost makes the market choose pure vision and millimeter-wave radar. It is imperative to reduce costs in order to successfully “get on the car” with lidar.
Tuyuan Enterprise
Cost reduction comes from technological innovation. Mo Lianghua, the founder of “Fushi Technology”, explained the technological iteration path of lidar chips to 36Kr: With the continuous development of chip technology, lidar has developed from the earliest APD (Avalanche Diode) to SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) , the cost has been greatly reduced, and continuous iterations have been gradually optimized towards indicators such as smaller size, better performance and stability, and longer detection distance.
Through technical iterations, the current cost of lidar has gradually dropped to tens of thousands of yuan, or even thousands of yuan. The SPAD chip developed by “Fushi Technology” can not only greatly reduce the cost of the lidar machine, but also improve its performance.
Relying on the internal research institute’s deep understanding of lidar systems and devices, “Fushi Technology” has planned the research and development of other lidar chips, opening up new technology reserves for the next three years.
The achievements of “Fushi Technology” are inseparable from an excellent team. Mo Lianghua, the founder of “Fushi Technology”, a local leading talent in Shenzhen, has successively developed a variety of sensor chips with global influence. After gaining insight into the market demand for lidar, Mo Lianghua led the team to conduct research and development for more than two years and invested hundreds of millions of dollars. In the end, many technical difficulties in process, device and circuit integration were overcome, and SPAD products were realized.
As one of the few companies in the world that has fully mastered the key technologies of SPAD chips, the “Fushi Technology” team has product output capabilities such as chip design, software and hardware support, and core algorithm development, and controls and continues the entire life cycle of design, mass production, and applications. Tracking to ensure zero-defect chip factory quality. And successfully realized the landing of multiple product lines with rich upstream and downstream industrial chain resources.
Tuyuan Enterprise
In the future, 3D vision will become the mainstream technology route. “Fushi Technology” has launched cutting-edge chip technology research and development for the next three years, and has comprehensively deployed SPAD single-point, single-line, multi-line and area array tape-outs, and has successively produced different application scenarios in overseas fabs and domestic fabs The product.
Investor’s point of view:
Gao Yunchuan, vice president of BAIC Industrial Investment, said: “The demand for lidar in smart cars is on the rise. At present, semi-solid-state lidar has been mass-produced in vehicles, and pure solid-state lidar based on single-photon detection area array receiving technology is also entering commercialization. progress. Fushi Technology continues to invest in single-photon detection chips, and has strong execution efficiency and commercialization ideas. It is hoped that its lidar detection chips will accelerate the scale application of the car and realize the replacement of foreign chips.”
The person in charge of the Huiyou Capital project said: “Fushi Technology is a company with profound technology accumulation, and has strong technical strength in hardware, software and system levels. We are very optimistic about the application of lidar in various scenarios in the future, especially �It is a vehicle scene, and SPAD is an important part of improving the performance of lidar and reducing costs. At present, Fushi Technology has made breakthroughs in SPAD products. We believe that under the leadership of Mr. Mo, each product line of Fushi will be It will bloom in an all-round way, occupy an important position in various subdivisions, and promote the rapid development of the industry.”
The person in charge of the investment department of Chengdu Science and Technology Venture Capital Group said, “Fushi Technology focuses on the R&D and design of intelligent sensing and processor chips and the development of supporting algorithms, and is committed to promoting the intelligent upgrade of human-computer interaction technology. At present, Fushi Technology It has successfully developed lidar receiving chip products such as SPAD and SiPM. The sensor chip FL00112 has officially passed the AEC-Q102 certification and completed mass production. LiDAR chip companies will enjoy the dividends of the rapid development of vehicle-mounted LiDAR in the future.”
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