Raised 1.3 billion yuan in financing. An 80s entrepreneur from Hebei invested by Lei Jun is going to IPO.

While Zhu Xiaohu was making three consecutive rounds of investments in the underwater robot upstart "Shihang Intelligence", another underwater robot company quietly stood outside the door of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Pencil News learned that the Science and Technology Innovation Board IPO application of Shenzhilan Marine Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shenzhilan) has been accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Shenzhilan is an underwater robot manufacturer. Its products include tethered underwater vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles, underwater gliders, automatic profiling floats, etc., as well as underwater boosters for underwater play.

In this IPO, Shenzhilan plans to raise 1.5 billion yuan. If it goes public successfully, Shenzhilan will become "the first share of Chinese underwater robots".

01

Wei Jiancang, the founder of Shenzhilan, was born in 1981 in Dacheng, Hebei.

In 2000, Wei Jiancang was admitted to the School of Mechanical Engineering at Tianjin University. He enlisted in the military on campus and became the first national defense student at Tianjin University. In 2004, he was recommended to pursue a postgraduate degree at the National University of Defense Technology.

After graduating from graduate school, Wei Jiancang worked at the Experimental Instrument Factory of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences, engaged in the research and development of medical experimental equipment.

Two events in 2012 changed the pattern of the ocean. One was the launch of the Liaoning aircraft carrier, which made China have its first commissioned aircraft carrier. The other was that the Jiaolong manned submersible set a world record for a 7,000 - meter deep - sea dive. By chance that year, Wei Jiancang learned that there was a large demand for underwater robots in China, but the prices were very high. Moreover, foreign countries were not willing to sell all kinds of robots to China, especially some underwater robots that could be used for military purposes.

At that time, the overall level of Chinese underwater robots was about 10 - 15 years behind that of Europe and the United States, and in some high - end fields, it was nearly 20 years behind.

In Europe and the United States, underwater robots have been widely used in fields such as offshore oil and gas engineering, submarine cable and pipeline maintenance, military reconnaissance and mine - countermeasures, and deep - sea scientific exploration. In China, engineering remotely operated vehicles were just starting up, and the degree of commercialization was very low; autonomous underwater robots were still mainly for scientific research verification, with limited reliability and task complexity; and the deep - sea manned/unmanned submersibles had not yet formed a complete system.

Wei Jiancang hoped to build his own team, develop products, and catch up with the world's advanced level.

At the end of 2012, Wei Jiancang took off his military uniform. In 2013, he founded Shenzhilan. According to a report by "Investment Circle", Wei Jiancang only took 10 minutes to obtain 5 million yuan in angel investment from two individual investors, Sun Haibo and Huang Jian. Later, Wei Jiancang learned that even his first investor didn't believe he could make it. "Sun's wife told me that at that time, Sun thought I was a nice guy, not a gambler and not a heavy drinker. Sun really recognized us, and investing in us was 'like buying lottery tickets'."

When he really started his entrepreneurial journey, Wei Jiancang found it very different from what he had imagined.

Underwater robots first face a harsh R & D environment. There is no GPS, and radio signals can hardly be transmitted out. At a depth of 7,000 meters, the huge water pressure places extremely high requirements on the equipment, which must be endured by complex technical means. Because of this, the cost of relevant experiments has always been high - even for a single sea - going test, it often costs hundreds of thousands of yuan a day. One also has to endure the painful environment of seasickness during sea tests.

In 2015, Wei Jiancang decided to develop an underwater thruster. In the second half of 2016, Shenzhilan developed an underwater propulsion device, and the key technology of underwater intelligent equipment was no longer dependent on imports.

In two years, they also developed an underwater robot that could reach a speed of over 4 knots at the fastest. One person could carry it on the back, operate it underwater, and it could also work in very narrow spaces.

This robot later came in handy at the Ming Tombs Reservoir. At a depth of more than 60 meters in the reservoir, a sluice gate had not been closing tightly for more than a decade, which had always troubled the management staff. After the team sent the robot down, they successfully closed the gate. Subsequently, in the case of the missing diver at the Panjiakou Reservoir in 2017 and the incident of the bus falling into the Yangtze River in Wanzhou, Chongqing in 2018, Shenzhilan's "Finless Porpoise" and "Pufferfish" products played roles in underwater exploration and positioning.

02

As the product maturity increased, investment institutions gradually saw the opportunities in underwater robots. Since its establishment, Shenzhilan has completed a total of 10 rounds of financing, with a cumulative publicly disclosed financing amount of over 1.3 billion yuan. The investors include more than 30 well - known institutions such as Shunwei Capital, Shengjing Network, Yuanxing Capital, Hongtai Fund, Primavera Capital, Jiayi Venture Capital, and Langmafeng Venture Capital.

Shenzhilan divides its product line into three directions: military, industrial, and entertainment/consumer.

In the military and industrial aspects, Shenzhilan has launched the "Porpoise" series represented by the Pufferfish, Finless Porpoise, and Dolphin, which are used for reservoir dam inspection, pipeline detection, river channel exploration, search and rescue, scientific research and teaching, etc. The products include tethered underwater vehicles, autonomous underwater vehicles, underwater gliders, and automatic profiling floats.

In the consumer field, Shenzhilan has launched the White Shark series of products, including underwater boosters, power floating boards, underwater drones, intelligent surfboards and other intelligent products for water sports, and is regarded as the "DJI" in the underwater equipment field.

It is worth mentioning that in the consumer field, Shenzhilan established an independent brand, Sublue. Its underwater boosters are suitable for various scenarios such as deep - sea diving, snorkeling, and swimming pools. They can free users from skill constraints, increase underwater speed, enable free flips, and make swimming and diving more fun. At the same time, they also support external sports cameras to help users record wonderful moments of swimming and diving.

Now, Sublue is exported to more than 80 countries around the world, occupies nearly 60% of the global market share in the underwater booster industry, and has become the number - one brand in the small category of underwater booster products on the Amazon platform.

The domestic underwater robot market is expected to exceed 40 billion yuan in 2027. Looking globally, underwater robots have run through a relatively mature business model.

For example, Oceaneering is the world's largest manufacturer of work - class ROVs (remotely operated vehicles). It has long provided ROV equipment + operation teams + operation and maintenance services to Shell, BP, Chevron, etc. The contract value of a single deep - water project can reach tens of millions of dollars, and ROV services are one of its most stable sources of cash flow. Based on the total revenue scale of about 2.7 billion US dollars in 2024, the ROV business may have contributed about 800 million to 900 million US dollars in revenue in 2024.

Compared with Oceaneering, Shenzhilan still has a lot of room for revenue growth.

This article does not constitute any investment advice. This article also refers to reports such as "Struggling for 12 Years, Spending Every Day in Failure at the Hardest Time, He Became the Industry Champion in a 'Desert'" (Zhenghedao) and "The Manufacturer of Underwater Robots" (People's Weekly), and thanks them all.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Pencil News" (ID: pencilnews), written by Huang Xiaogui and edited by Zhu Zhishan. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.