"Robovision" Secures Nearly 100 Million Yuan in Series A Financing to Supply Visual Inspection and Measurement Equipment to Companies like CSOT and OPPO | Exclusive on 36Kr.

Written by Hu Yiting

Edited by Yuan Silai

HardcoreTech has learned that recently, Shenzhen Robovision Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Robovision") successfully completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series A financing round. The investors include Hefei Construction Investment and Hefei Innovation Investment, etc. This financing will be mainly used for the construction of the production base in East China and the market promotion of the domestic substitution of high-end measurement and inspection equipment for Wuhan Robovision Semiconductor.

Robovision was founded in 2014, specializing in the research, development and sales of visual inspection and measurement equipment. Its business covers multiple fields such as consumer electronics, semiconductors, display panels, military industry and new energy vehicles. The company has successfully industrialized visual inspection equipment of various sizes and the overall solution. Its long-term partners include well-known domestic enterprises such as China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., OPPO, vivo, Sunway Communication, Lingyi iTech, Dongni, Luxshare Precision, BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd., Tianma Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Imoo, and has entered the supply chain system of global famous brands such as Huawei, BYD, Apple, Google and Meta.

Since 2020, Robovision has started to invest in the research and development of key technologies and equipment for high-precision optical measurement and inspection in the semiconductor field, and in 2023, Wuhan Robovision Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. was established. According to the data of VLSI, the global semiconductor inspection and measurement equipment market reached 12.83 billion US dollars in 2023, with a year-on-year growth of 19%, indicating a huge market potential.

At present, the global semiconductor measurement and inspection equipment market is mainly monopolized by overseas giants, and manufacturers such as KLA, Hitachi, ASML and Camtek occupy more than 80% of the market share. Domestic listed enterprises such as Shanghai AccoTEST Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Risel Technology Co., Ltd. and Suzhou SETEC Automation Co., Ltd. have set up related production lines and are in a critical period of domestic substitution.

In this context, Wuhan Robovision Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Robovision, officially launched the fully automatic Wafer optical measurement and inspection equipment in 2023, and currently, 6 products have been launched. The above equipment can conduct 2D and 3D integrated optical measurement and inspection for wafers before and after cutting in the advanced packaging and testing stage, and can effectively identify defects that affect the chip performance, such as line contamination, protective layer scratches, residual glue, and bubbles. At the same time, the equipment can also quantitatively describe the structural size and characteristics of the wafer, such as physical parameters such as RDL line width, line spacing, and critical dimensions.

Fully automatic Wafer optical measurement and inspection equipment, Image source: The enterprise

Compared with the similar products of the international competitor Camtek, Robovision Semiconductor's high-precision optical measurement and inspection equipment has strong competitiveness in many aspects such as functional completeness, detection accuracy, detection speed, machine stability, and AI performance. At present, the company has cumulatively tested more than 100,000 wafers, with a defect detection accuracy of up to 0.7 μm, a defect detection rate of over 99.5%, and an over-detection rate controlled at 0.5%.

Shi Bangjin, the Director of Investment and Financing of Robovision, said that compared with Camtek, Robovision can provide more localized services and more timely responses to domestic customers to meet their customized needs. Robovision Semiconductor's 2D + 3D wafer measurement and inspection equipment has completed small-batch delivery and acceptance in 2024, and it is expected to achieve a breakthrough growth next year, with an estimated output value of more than 100 million yuan for a single product.

In addition to semiconductor optical measurement and inspection equipment, Robovision also provides visual inspection equipment in the field of screens and display panels for long-term cooperative large customers such as China Star Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd., to detect defects such as chipped and missing corners of the substrate, poor protective film, poor polarizer, and dark spots, bright spots and dark lines in the liquid crystal screen display.

In terms of the team, Robovision's technical team has more than ten years of industry experience, and the proportion of R & D and technical personnel in the company is close to 50%.