Style3D Completes Nearly $100 Million Pre-B+ Round to Build Digital Fashion Infrastructure

On June 21, Lingdi Style3D, a digital infrastructure provider for the physical world, announced the completion of a nearly $100 million Pre-B+ funding round, with continued investment from Hillhouse, CDH Investments, and other institutions. The proceeds will be used primarily for R&D iteration of core technologies and products, as well as overseas market expansion and development. Gaorong Ventures had led Style3D's Series A+ round in early 2020 and increased its stake in subsequent rounds.

Founded in 2015, Lingdi Style3D provides underlying technical services powered by proprietary simulation engines and industry-grade industrial software, building a technology-driven 3D design integrated collaboration platform to become the digital infrastructure for fashion. It is currently deployed in the apparel industry, helping clothing enterprises digitize their entire value chain from R&D and collaboration to sales exhibitions and production.

Focused on Digital Fashion Empowering Sustainable Fashion

R&D and design are the critical bottlenecks constraining the apparel industry's development. Style3D enters from the design angle, replacing physical samples with highly realistic, editable, and manufacturable digital garments that circulate online. This enables fashion enterprises and designers with R&D needs to adopt efficient, cloud-based, and intuitive working and collaboration methods — improving speed-to-market while supporting sustainable fashion.

Style3D's main product matrix

But digital fashion's applications extend far beyond this. As social, work, and lifestyle patterns gradually shift to the cloud and converge, individual fashion expression on the consumer side is increasingly experienced and expressed online. On the brand side, digital product launches are becoming more frequent to achieve more direct, engaging, and interactive product display and sales methods. An entirely new "people, goods, venue" model is taking shape, and digital fashion is becoming an essential form and medium of fashion and self-expression — riding a fast track of growth.

In late April, XINTIANDI Digital Fashion Launch, jointly presented by Xintiandi (Rui'an), Shanghai Fashion Week, Xiaohongshu and its digital space R-SPACE, and nine Chinese independent brand designers, featured core simulation technology support from Style3D.

Style3D Studio simulation design software interface

As a stealth pioneer and leader in the digital fashion track, Style3D grew from within the apparel industry and now empowers it through technology, gradually expanding toward diversified commercial value including digital garment creation, physical-digital garment integration, digital asset trading, and fashion industry interconnection.

Tackling Scientific Challenges Building Digital World Infrastructure

Currently, the construction of the metaverse and digital worlds has become a global topic. To truly drive the digitization of the physical world, what is first needed is a powerful physical simulation engine. Among all simulation problems, cloth simulation represents the highest peak. Because fabric materials and collisions are extraordinarily complex, simulation engines for the apparel domain require an even stronger technical foundation.

Style3D fabric simulation effects

Style3D's material simulation and simulation technology has consistently occupied the global technological high ground, serving as critical infrastructure for physical world digitization and one of the foundational building blocks of the metaverse. The Style3D Research Institute, led by Professor Huamin Wang, comprises an internationally top-tier graphics research team of simulation and algorithm experts from renowned institutions including Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. Recently, its paper on "GPU real-time cloth collision simulation" was accepted to SIGGRAPH 2022, the world's largest and most prestigious graphics conference. This publication of research results demonstrates that Style3D has established even higher technical barriers in apparel simulation, and marks a significant step forward for global technology in this field.

To date, Style3D has accumulated over 50 technical patents and software copyrights in related fields, and has participated in drafting multiple national standards for digital garments and dress forms.

Accelerating Overseas Expansion Building a Global Digital Fashion Community

Starting in 2021, Style3D successively established operations centers in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, New York, and Milan to provide localized services to local fashion and cross-industry clients. Currently, Style3D's overseas business segments are growing steadily, gaining influence in Europe, America, and Belt and Road regions, and reaching relevant partnerships with international leaders in various sub-sectors such as Nvidia, Alvanon, YKK, Pantone, and Jeanologia.

Style3D founder and CEO Chen Liu stated: "Overseas markets developed apparel simulation products earlier, but due to language and service constraints, manufacturing-oriented traditional industries face considerable learning and cost barriers in adopting advanced technologies, while emerging industries like gaming and film encounter technical hurdles in apparel simulation. Solving the technical challenges of apparel simulation and advancing industry digitization represent both our original mission and our opportunity in Style3D's going-global strategy."

According to feedback from overseas users, Style3D's fabric and garment simulation design software offers strong usability advantages compared to competing products, and its SaaS collaboration platform is uniquely innovative, conveniently addressing collaboration pain points caused by time and distance barriers. Meanwhile, localized training implementation and service teams both domestically and overseas enable high-quality, high-performance apparel simulation technology to be deployable and applicable across diverse specialized scenarios.

In recent years, as global apparel markets have grown increasingly complex, supply chains have become especially critical. Leveraging its strong technological, ecosystem, and content advantages, Style3D will be dedicated to promoting deep exchange and cooperation across borders, platforms, and languages within the digital world ecosystem community, providing global fashion designers with more accessible productivity tools and bringing reliable, efficient digital fashion and simulation solutions to cross-sector partners.