Cloud-native intelligent industrial design SaaS provider Shexu Technology closes Series A funding

On February 24, Shanghai Shexu Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shexu" or "the company") announced the completion of its Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over 100 million RMB within a year. This round was led by ByteDance, with Lianchuang Yongjun participating, and existing shareholders Gaorong Ventures, SIG, K2VC, and Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group making additional investments. The funds will be used primarily to strengthen R&D capabilities and expand business development. Gaorong Ventures had previously invested in Shexu's angel round in early 2021 and has continued to back subsequent rounds.

Shexu is an innovative company providing intelligent design and manufacturing software products and services, building an intelligent design technology system for industrial mechanical design scenarios. Its core business is cloud-native intelligent industrial design SaaS services and engineering services.

Launching the First AI+CAD Industrial R&D Design Software to Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiency

Shexu's intelligent industrial design SaaS software is the first AI+CAD industrial R&D design software on the market. In addition to the geometry and graphics engines essential to CAD software, it incorporates a proprietary computing engine. This engine is built on industrial data and centered on neural network intelligent algorithms, with fully independent intellectual property rights for its 3D model data extraction technology.

Currently, Shexu's products are mainly applied in automotive welding fixture design and stamping die design, providing an integrated solution with core technical functions including "intelligent recommendation, intelligent interaction, intelligent drafting, and parts factory."

Going forward, Shexu plans to build on its intelligent design foundation to connect simulation, process, and manufacturing workflows, achieving efficient OTDTD (Order To Design To Delivery) transformation from requirements through design to delivery — thereby helping customers reduce costs and improve efficiency, and ultimately driving gains in social productivity.

Shexu is also the first domestic vendor to deploy cloud-native intelligent design services in the complete vehicle and automotive equipment sectors. In design project delivery, it has already improved design efficiency from the traditional 24 person-days to 10 person-days, with plans to further reduce this to 6 person-days through its collaboration engine.

Expanding Application Scenarios and Value Chain Links, Enabling Efficient Collaboration Through Cloud-Native Architecture

"In product development, Shexu has expanded from its early focused product matrix into two new dimensions," said Dr. Yongrong Wu, founder and CEO of Shexu. "Over the past six months, we have successively expanded our business from marketization and scaling perspectives, enhancing our one-stop industrial design service capabilities. In serving customers, we have moved beyond SaaS subscriptions alone to combine design services, gradually covering mainstream domestic automotive brands and top-tier automotive equipment manufacturers."

In terms of expanding application scenarios, Shexu first broadened the categories of automotive equipment it could serve. From its initial focus on welding fixture design, it has expanded to stamping die design and some inspection fixture design. According to automotive industry data, the current domestic market for scaled welding fixtures is nearly 40 billion RMB, with design fees accounting for roughly 2 billion RMB; the stamping die market exceeds 100 billion RMB, with design fees reaching 8 billion RMB.

In terms of connecting the value chain, Shexu has carried out a series of product upgrades, starting from the design process and gradually covering design collaboration and subsequent simulation stages. This presents entirely new technical development challenges, requiring process re-engineering and the establishment of new data standards for digital models based on industrial design standards.

Collaboration is a fundamental need among engineers in the industrial design field, and this need becomes increasingly pronounced as industrial design complexity grows. Dr. Wu explained that traditional industrial software faces significant difficulties in enabling collaboration. Shexu's design software, powered by its cloud-native architecture, offers strong feasibility in collaborative technology. By opening the product in a web browser or even on mobile devices, users can directly access the design engineering interface and distribute corresponding collaborative tasks and workflows based on product requirements, substantially lowering the barrier to team collaboration.

At present, through gradually broadening its application scenarios, Shexu has achieved steady growth in SaaS product usage, serving nearly 30 professional clients with over 10,000 design solutions downloaded. In the next phase, Shexu will continue to expand across the value chain while simultaneously advancing the development of corresponding design functions based on its intelligent design software for other industrial scenarios.

Since its founding in 2020, Shexu has grown to a team of over 100 people. Its R&D and technical team members mostly come from well-known companies such as NIO, Alibaba, SAIC, and Autodesk, combining industrial backgrounds with cutting-edge AI research capabilities. Its engineering services team averages over five years of industry experience, having accumulated extensive project experience with leading traditional and new energy vehicle brands, ensuring efficient project management and delivery capabilities.