Xingmai Innovation Raises Nearly 200 Million Yuan in Angel Round, Source Code Capital Participates

Originally published on 36Kr

Pool robot company Xingmai Innovation recently closed an angel round of nearly RMB 200 million, jointly invested by Source Code Capital, Shunwei Capital, Hillhouse, Yunmu Capital, and Suzhou Wuzhong Innovation Investment Group. The proceeds will primarily go toward product R&D, supply chain development, and brand building. Currently, there are over 26 million private swimming pools worldwide, growing at a rate of 500,000 to 700,000 per year. With existing demand compounded by new additions on the demand side, and a supply side marked by stagnant innovation, the market represents a classic blue ocean opportunity.

According to data from AskCI, the pool robot market reached $1.612 billion in 2021, with growth exceeding 20% and a CAGR of over 16.24% from 2017 to 2021. The market is projected to hit $2.286 billion by 2023.

As a sector with nearly four decades of history, the pool robot industry has relatively few players and high market concentration. Because traditional brands are distant from supply chain centers and competition has been lacking, leading companies have severely underinvested in product innovation — resulting in more than 20 years without meaningful breakthroughs in functionality. Public data shows that the top three companies by global private pool cleaning robot shipments in 2021 held 48%, 25%, and 14% market share respectively. Currently, mainstream leading brands still primarily sell wired products, with considerable room for improvement in both cleaning performance and intelligence.

From a penetration perspective, only 19% of pool owners currently use pool robots. Compared with suction-side cleaners, automatic pressure-side cleaners, and other pool cleaning methods, pool cleaning robots are on the cusp of transitioning from niche to mainstream. Analogous to the robot vacuum trajectory, once products break through bottlenecks in intelligence and ease of use, penetration rates should rise rapidly.

When asked why he chose to start a company in the pool robot space, founder and CEO Shengle Wang explained his thinking from two angles.

On the commercial side, rather than focusing on whether the ceiling of future market space is large enough, Wang cares more about the addressable market. While pool robots may appear to have less upside than robotic lawn mowers, their necessity and frequency of use are markedly higher.

Take North America as an example: in outdoor environments, leaves, sediment, and algae will contaminate a pool within two to three days without cleaning, rendering it unusable. Potential users who own private pools typically have higher spending power, willingness to pay, and time costs than average consumers. Pool cleaning robots can significantly reduce the time and effort these users spend on DIY cleaning or hiring help. One telling data point: while robotic lawn mower penetration remains stuck around 5%, pool robot penetration has already reached 19%, with market demand well validated.

On the capabilities side, Wang's prior experience gives him confidence that the Xingmai team can build competitive, innovative products across product planning, cost control, and technical feasibility. Wang previously worked at ECOVACS and Dreame, leading development of robot vacuums, window-cleaning robots, solar panel cleaning robots, and other products, giving him deep technical understanding and demand insight into robotics products.

Compared horizontally with the robot vacuum space, pool cleaning robots lag by five to eight years in product performance and user experience. Applying robot vacuum product thinking to transform the pool robot industry represents a significant commercial opportunity.

From a product evolution standpoint, pool robots are advancing across four dimensions: intelligence, mobility, cleaning power, and ease of use.

Currently, industry players have focused their efforts on ease of use and cleaning power. The rapid adoption of cordless pool cleaning robots means users no longer need to wrangle wet power cords, improving the startup and storage experience to some degree. On cleaning power, existing pool robot products have poor environmental perception and cannot autonomously assess cleanliness levels. They primarily determine cleaning duration based on pool size, resulting in insufficient coverage. Most products also lack wall-climbing functionality and cannot clean pool walls.

Leveraging powerful intelligent path planning and navigation technology, Xingmai Innovation's first-generation product will deliver substantial improvements in cleaning efficiency and user experience. For cleaning power, Xingmai's product will feature wall-climbing capability for three-dimensional cleaning, along with full-dimension zigzag sweeping and automatic corner turning. For ease of use, the product will adopt a wireless design, eliminating the storage step for users. Additionally, Xingmai's product innovatively includes an app-based map display showing the robot's movement trajectory and real-time status, enhancing the interactive experience.

To build core technical moats, the Xingmai team has replaced brushed motors with custom-developed brushless motors, dramatically improving sensitivity and battery life. On this foundation, they've adopted new ultrasonic sensors combined with multiple environmental perception methods and self-developed motion algorithms to achieve precise navigation and path planning in underwater environments.

Located in the Yangtze River Delta, Xingmai Innovation can maximize the region's efficient robotics supply chain system while leveraging local industrial clustering to attract top talent. The founding team comes from multiple unicorn robotics and smart hardware companies, with experience developing, launching, and selling million-unit-scale robot products. They bring rich industry experience and resources across technology, sales, product development, and supply chain. The company has conducted extensive engineering research and innovation at both the software and hardware levels, working to create products that closely match user needs.

In Wang's view, Xingmai Innovation is a technology-driven product company built on scenarios and consumer needs. Deep scenario-based consumer insight and sustained innovative R&D capability constitute the company's core competitive advantages.

Xingmai Innovation's next step will focus on the North American market. The team has made multiple trips for in-depth market and channel research, gaining detailed understanding of local users' real needs to continuously refine product and marketing approaches. For instance, some users use their pools even in low winter temperatures — a finding that broke the team's assumptions and requires designing for performance and stability across different ambient temperatures.

Currently, the company's product development and mass production preparations are progressing rapidly and methodically, with the first-generation product planned for launch in early 2024. Wang believes 2024 will be an inflection point for pool robots, and the Xingmai Innovation team will represent China's advanced manufacturing new wave, focused on building a globally leading pool intelligent cleaning robot brand.

As a Xingmai Innovation board member, Yangjie She of Source Code Capital said: "Pool cleaning robots address a genuine need, and there remains substantial room for iteration in product functionality and form — it's a suitable category for startups to enter. The Xingmai Innovation team has distinctive insights into customer needs and product function definition, and their previous entrepreneurial experience has honed their capabilities in supply chain, marketing, and organizational management. We look forward to them bringing revolutionary innovative products to the industry."