Lidar chip manufacturer Feixin Electronics receives tens of millions of pre-A round financing

Xi'an Feixin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., a provider of LiDAR chip level solutions, has recently received tens of millions of pre-A round financing led by Bosch and Obi Zhongguang. This round of financing will be used for the technology research and development, market expansion, and other aspects of LiDAR chip level solutions.

It is reported that Feixin Electronics plans to release its first LiDAR product in the fourth quarter of 2018 and achieve small-scale production in 2019.

Public information shows that Xi'an Feixin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2016 and is a private high-tech enterprise specializing in the research and development of optoelectronic equipment, laser radar, and integrated circuit design. In the two years since its establishment, Feixin Electronics has successively received investment from Bosch, Xike Angel, Shanghai Fengrui, Jinshajiang United Capital, and others. At present, the company's valuation is 470 million yuan.

With the gradual popularization of autonomous vehicles, the LiDAR market is also maintaining a high-speed growth trend. According to the latest data, benefiting from technological advancements and increased production capacity, the market size of LiDAR is expected to exceed 10 billion in 2020. Based on an estimated 25% penetration rate in the pre installation market and 5% penetration rate in the aftermarket by 2020, the size of the Chinese market is expected to reach nearly 20 billion yuan.

At present, in the LiDAR market, foreign manufacturers mainly include Velodyne, Ibeo, Innoviz, Leddar Tech, and Quanergy. Relatively speaking, domestic manufacturers started relatively late, with major players including Beike Tianhui, Hesai Technology, and Sagitar Juchuang. It is worth noting that products from Velodyne and Quanergy in the United States, as well as Ibeo in Germany, have been applied in autonomous driving test vehicles and are currently in a market monopoly position.

Since its establishment, Xi'an Feixin Electronics has independently developed core technologies such as chip design, circuit design, signal processing, and system integration to develop low-cost, compact, highly reliable, and highly anti-interference laser radar products with eye protection.

In response to industry pain points, Feixin's R&D products currently use continuous wave carrier modulation or coherent heterodyne detection solutions, utilizing focal plane point cloud ranging technology to meet high spatial resolution and large field of view angles. The detection distance can exceed 200m without the need for complex and expensive mechanical scanning devices, continuously improving system reliability and making the obtained images clearer.

It is understood that Feixin Electronics currently focuses on a B2B business model, with research and development, production of laser radar systems and core chips as its main business. The future customer base mainly targets domestic and foreign manufacturers of automobiles, robots, drones, and other production and research and development. In the early stages of the company's development, it mainly cooperated with high-tech companies such as domestic and foreign automotive electronics, vehicle manufacturers, and autonomous driving. Currently, it has reached strategic cooperation agreements with its main target customers.