Using AI large models to reshape clothing design and pattern making, "Shenfu Technology" has obtained tens of millions of yuan in Pre-A round financing | 36Kr exclusive.

Text | Wang Fangyu

Editor | Su Jianxun

36Kr has learned that Zhejiang Shenfu Artificial Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shenfu Technology") recently announced the completion of a tens of millions of yuan Pre-A round of financing, led by Shanghai Houyi Capital. This round of funds will be used for model development, technical talent introduction, market expansion, and other aspects.

Previously in March 2024, Shenfu Technology had obtained tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing led by Zhejiang Kunxin Investment and followed by industrial upstream and downstream partners.

Shenfu Technology was established in April 2023. It is a startup company that provides AI solutions for the clothing industry. It is committed to solving the problems in clothing design and pattern-making through AI large model technology, reducing the design threshold and R & D costs.

The founder of Shenfu Technology, Wu Sisi, has worked in the clothing design industry for nearly ten years and has rich clothing supply chain resources. She is also a successful serial entrepreneur; other founding members come from companies such as Tencent and Google and have rich experience in clothing design and the AI field.

Currently, generative AI is changing the operation mode of various industries with its unprecedented potential, and the transformation of the clothing design link is also underway.

In the traditional processes of the clothing industry, clothing designers and pattern makers are two different positions. The former is responsible for design, and the latter is responsible for the next step of engineering. The former is more inclined to artistic thinking, and the latter is more inclined to engineering thinking. There are often communication problems between the two upstream and downstream processes due to thinking differences. This gives AI large models space for optimization and efficiency improvement.

At present, Shenfu Technology has publicly released two AI large models in the vertical fields of "Jiangyi Shenzao" and "Jinxiu Qianshe". The application equipped with the Jiangyi Shenzao model - Huayiyi AI Pattern Making is also about to be released, which can provide services including AI design and pattern making, fabric selection, and sample clothing orders for clothing enterprises and e-commerce enterprises.

According to the introduction, Huayiyi AI Pattern Making is a design and pattern-making tool that allows clothing designers to independently generate CAD pattern-making diagrams after the design is completed, thereby improving work efficiency.

"Originally, clothing designers do not have the ability to make patterns. Huayiyi gives designers the ability to make patterns, and then the pattern makers make revisions, which can greatly shorten the cycle from design to pattern making. Originally, only 2 to 3 patterns could be made in one day, but now with revisions, 20 to 30 patterns can be made in one day, which is equivalent to a 10-fold increase in efficiency." Wu Sisi told 36Kr.

The Huayiyi AI Pattern Making product of Shenfu Technology         Image source: Authorized by the enterprise

However, achieving the above functions is not easy. The difficulty in the practical application of large models lies in the deep connection with the business scenarios of enterprises. In the clothing design and pattern-making links, there are also inherent obstacles that restrict the application of AI large models.

Wu Sisi said that relying solely on the ability of the large model cannot realize the process from clothing design to pattern making.

"For the same style diagram, different pattern makers can make ten patterns. This is a non-standard process. Huayiyi AI Pattern Making is not a simple text-to-image generation, but a professional pattern-making tool. It relies on the high-quality data accumulated by the team in the long-term clothing design and pattern-making links for training to have the pattern-making ability. This is the biggest feature and advantage that distinguishes Shenfu Technology from technology-side companies."

It is reported that the Huayiyi AI Pattern Making tool will start a trial in January 2025. Currently, Shenfu Technology has carried out business cooperation with many leading manufacturers in the clothing industry in advance to help them improve the design and pattern-making business capabilities within the enterprise.

At the same time, Shenfu Technology is also exploring new application scenarios for this tool.

In Wu Sisi's view, the next-generation shopping scenario in the clothing industry must be "determined by consumer demand for production and manufacturing", which will cause the iterative upgrade of various links in the clothing industry. The digitization of clothing design and pattern-making has always been the core bottleneck of the clothing industry. Shenfu Technology's AI pattern-making technology will promote the innovation of the design and R & D links in the clothing industry and provide a core technical base for the next-generation clothing shopping scenario.

In the next step, Wu Sisi told 36Kr that in addition to making the application on the product side more mature, Shenfu Technology will accelerate the exploration of the next-generation clothing consumption scenario and explore more practical scenarios with the leading domestic Internet platforms and clothing brand companies.