Chaoshan youth are tinkering with robots, with a latest valuation exceeding 10 billion!

The robot company of Chaoshan youth has secured new financing.

On December 16, Cloud Whale Intelligence announced that it had received a total investment of hundreds of millions of yuan from Shenzhen and Wuxi.

A few days ago, in the Shenzhen office, its founder and CEO, Zhang Junbin, stated in an interview with 21CBR reporters, ‘There is a goal to double in size by 2025, and there is a need for funding.’

Yunjing mainly produces cleaning robots, and has completed multiple rounds of financing, with investors including ByteDance, Sequoia Capital, and Qingshuibay Fund managed by Li Zexiang, with a latest valuation of over tens of billions.

34-year-old Zhang Junbin, who has never worked a day, focused on research and development and created a unicorn company.

Two lines go hand in hand

“In November, the revenue target for this year has been completed ahead of schedule, with an increase of more than 100%.” Zhang Junbin told reporters that investors are very satisfied with the performance in 2024.

He analyzed that income growth has two reasons: one is strong product capabilities, all 10 products released in 2024 are competitive; the other is good performance in overseas markets.

For example, the company’s main product is a sweeping robot, and in May 2023, the first floor scrubber was released, and now it is among the top in the industry, with a total of 2 series and more than 5 products.

According to data from AVC Cloud, in September 2024, its online retail sales market share of floor scrubbers reached 7.03%, entering the top three in the industry.

“Floor scrubbers have become a new strategic category for the company.” Zhang Junbin pointed out.

Why can the Yunjing floor scrubber come from behind? Zhang believes that the R&D team has found the pain points of users.

By interviewing core users, the team has identified the cleaning needs of Chinese families. For example, many Chinese families have multiple generations living together, and parents help with cleaning. They need products that are lightweight, easy to operate, and easy to use.

The Cloud Whale team adopts a lightweight design method, reducing the burden on the hands to 0.8 kilograms, which is equivalent to the weight of two bottles of cola.

According to Zhang Junbin, the company has five or six hundred R&D personnel. He is also deeply involved in product development and holds the title of “Chief Product Manager”.

Category expansion accelerates to cover more price segments. The company’s flagship product “Xiaoyao 001” launched in April, the price has risen to 5,000 yuan. As an entry-level product, the price of the sweeper K1 is as low as 1200 yuan; The price of the newly released floor scrubber F1 is also less than 1500 yuan.

“In the high-end market, we have stood firm this year,” Zhang Jiaobin said. From scratch, Yunjing’s market share in this area has exceeded 10%."

The company is also accelerating the expansion of offline channels, opening new stores in cities such as Chengdu, Chongqing, and Wuhan. The team is also making efforts to enter overseas markets, reaching more than 30 countries. As of the end of September, overseas business revenue has increased nearly 7 times compared to the same period last year.

Zhang Junbin revealed that overseas revenue accounts for nearly 30%, and next year will enter more countries, with the goal of sales volume reaching half.

"The overseas market is vast, and it’s worth doing. In China, the ‘volume’ can be moved, and going overseas is a dimensionality reduction blow, and the competitiveness of cloud whale products overseas is strong. Zhang Junbin pointed out.

Organization upgrade

While expanding in all directions, Zhang Junbin is adjusting the organizational structure.

“The total number of employees has decreased from over 1600 to over 1400,” he told the reporter. According to insiders at Cloud Whale, this round of optimization is based on a global layout, and the company has made organizational upgrades to business unit and globalization to respond to fierce market competition.

Previously, the organizational structure of Cloud Whale was adjusted from a “matrix” to a business division system.

“It used to be the ‘Big Army’, now it’s the ‘Special Forces’, which are more efficient and healthierly organized.” Mr. Zhang said the company had turned some cost centers into profit centers.

For example, the design department used to be purely work, but now it is “taking orders” and completing tasks assigned internally. The head of the department should consider whether the amount of orders given internally can support the team members, and “have to carry the profit index”.

The efficiency of the leader has also greatly improved. Zhang Junbin explained that previously, he had to personally manage many businesses. After the restructuring of the business unit, he only needs to recruit suitable managers to manage them, and he can set goals himself.

Founders have more time to have one-on-one in-depth communication with executives and communicate the company’s strategy more clearly.

Technically, the company has established a dedicated R&D platform for core technologies of clean robots such as fan design, motor design, battery safety, wireless transmission, and AI recognition.

After the completion of the organizational adjustment, the operating expenses decreased by 30%, and the cloud whale achieved monthly profit. At the same time, product iteration is accelerated.

Taking S2 as an example, 5 months after its release, the company launched the S2 Island Glorious Edition, adding a multi-functional integrated base station function, and the starting price increased by 400 yuan.

“The team is in a really good shape.” Zhang Junbin also mentioned that the company has a team that is doing research and development work related to embodied intelligence.

Yun Jing will not make humanoid robots, according to Zhang, the future direction of Yun Jing’s products will evolve from surface cleaning to space cleaning, which is “very interesting”.

Pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps

“I am from Chaoshan, and I started my business as soon as I graduated.” In 2015, after completing his studies at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhang Junbin had the idea of starting a business.

He submitted his resume to Professor Li Zexiang. The robotics industry guru took him to visit major international technology companies to choose the field of sweeping robots.

In a small office in Dongguan, six young people made an important entrepreneurial decision. The team started from scratch and went through a difficult period.

Zhang Junbin recalled that he and his colleagues slept in the company for a year and a half, waking up every day to tinker with machines, working late into the night and sleeping on the spot, earning a salary of 2000 yuan.

In the first three years, he devoted himself to research and development, trying out more than 20 technical solutions. He experimented with the shape of the mop more than 200 times, constantly trial and error to find a solution.

Until 2019, Yunjing released its first product, the floor mopping robot J1, which can wash its own mop. It made a big splash and generated tens of millions of sales on its first day on the Double Eleven shopping festival.

In 8 years, the scale of Cloud Whale personnel has grown from 6 to 1400. The company has accumulated more than 1100 technical patents in multiple fields such as SLAM, 3D perception, AI object recognition, and robot structural technology.

Entrepreneurship is a practice, a process of finding oneself.

During the interview that lasted for over an hour, he sighed multiple times, expressing that entrepreneurship is very difficult, but he finds joy in it. The day before the interview, he worked until 2 a.m. before returning home.

Compared with the early stage of entrepreneurship, Zhang Junbin’s management methods are more mature.

Before, he pursued perfection and hoped not to make mistakes. When senior executives mentioned different options, he sometimes hesitated to make decisions. At the current stage, he spends more time on strategy and has a clear direction. “Horizontally, we will expand into more new product categories; vertically, we will focus on embodied intelligence, and develop both lines simultaneously.”

Zhang Junbin looks forward to the high-growth Cloud Whale achieving its goal of doubling its revenue by 2025.

(Source: 21st Century Business Herald)

Source: Oriental Fortune Network

Author: 21st Century Economic Report