This Chengdu-based company has raised hundreds of millions of yuan in financing, breaking the overseas monopoly in the commercial aerospace storage field. | 36Kr exclusive.
Written by | Lin Qingqing
Edited by | Yuan Silai
36Kr has learned that recently, "ExaStor Technology", a provider of commercial aerospace storage solutions, has completed its Series A financing round. It was exclusively invested by Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment, with an amount of nearly 100 million yuan. Previous investors include CASSTAR, Shenzhen Capital Group, etc. This round of funds will be mainly used for the establishment of an aerospace-level storage technology R & D center and the construction of an intelligent factory with an annual output of 10,000 sets of aerospace-level SSD modules.
"ExaStor Technology" was founded in 2018, focusing on the research and development of spacecraft data storage systems. It is committed to solving three major technical problems: anti-radiation reinforcement of industrial-grade NAND flash memory space, inter-satellite data sharing, and structured management of spatial data. It has formed a full-stack technical system from aerospace-level SSD controller chips, storage modules to onboard storage systems.
Since China included satellite Internet in the new infrastructure in 2020, the construction of low-orbit satellites has been accelerated. According to the filing plan of the International Telecommunication Union, China needs to complete the deployment of about 13,000 low-orbit satellites by 2034, among which the long-term plan of the "G60 Satellite Chain" is to achieve 12,000 satellites for networking. Haitong Securities predicts that China's annual launch volume may reach 6,000 by 2030. According to CCID data, the total number of satellites in orbit worldwide may exceed 50,000, with China accounting for about 25%. At the same time, with the significant increase in a large number of remote sensing loads, the daily remote sensing data volume may reach the level of 20TB, which puts forward higher requirements for the capacity, reliability, and real-time processing ability of the storage system.
Aerospace storage needs to ensure zero data loss in extreme environments, with extremely high technical barriers. The core chips have long been monopolized by foreign enterprises such as 3D Plus. Traditional domestic architecture solutions are difficult to meet the needs of high-orbit/deep-space exploration, and the upgrade of the satellite computing architecture has also given rise to the demand for standardized storage. Currently, only a few domestic enterprises are involved in this field, and the "national team" is still the dominant player.
Zhu Rongzhen, the founder of "ExaStor Technology", pointed out that the commercial aerospace storage field still faces distinct pain points. Specifically, the reliability of industrial-grade flash memory media in a strong radiation environment is insufficient, and it requires multi-level systematic reinforcement from media screening, controller chips, array systems to file systems; the efficiency of in-satellite data sharing is low, resulting in the demand for onboard distributed storage; the lack of a structured management system for massive spatial data increases the burden of ground data processing.
Zhu Rongzhen emphasized, "Aerospace storage is not simply environmental reinforcement, but rather the reconstruction of multi-level reliability capabilities starting from the bottom layer of the chip." Based on this, in the early stage of its establishment, "ExaStor Technology" chose to start from the reconfiguration of the chip circuit level. 36Kr has learned that the aerospace-level SSD controller based on the 65nm process of "ExaStor Technology" has achieved mass production and has been successfully applied to nearly 30 important model tasks such as China's broadband Internet constellation mass-produced satellites and deep-space exploration. The 28nm process aerospace-level SSD controller chip is planned to be taped out in 2025 to further improve the ecological coordination ability of the onboard computer and onboard computing power.
Its self-developed onboard storage system AS3 can achieve a maximum capacity of 1Pb, a read and write rate of 300Gbps, support JPEG-LS real-time compression and AI preprocessing, and can reduce the downstream bandwidth consumption by 50%. Its SpaceFS distributed spatial cloud architecture can increase the satellite data sharing efficiency by 60%.
Currently, the products of "ExaStor Technology" have been applied to major model tasks such as domestic large-scale communication satellite constellations, deep-space exploration, and manned spaceflight, and have supplied to commercial aerospace companies such as Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd., GalaxySpace, and MicroNano Satellite. In the international market, the company's products have been applied to remote sensing satellites in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and other regions, and it is accelerating the expansion of the European and East Asian markets.
"Aerospace storage is the core link in building the interstellar data base. And the past two years are a very important window period for commercial aerospace. The magnitude of change is epoch-making compared to the past few decades." Zhu Rongzhen believes that with the development of commercial aerospace, the number of satellite launches will increase significantly, and it is expected that the annual launch number will be on the scale of thousands of satellites in the next few years. This will put forward higher capacity and quality requirements for the entire industry chain.
In terms of the team, Zhu Rongzhen, the founder of "ExaStor Technology", is from Anqing, Anhui. He graduated with a Ph.D. from the Xi'an Institute of Microelectronics Technology. He has served as a senior engineer in well-known enterprises such as SST, INTEL, and LSI, and as the technical head of NSG BU at GigaDevice. He has many years of experience in storage technology research and development and team management. In addition, the R & D team has led the development of storage controllers with a process below 20nm and has more than 15 years of aerospace engineering practice experience. Currently, the R & D personnel of the company account for 75%, covering fields such as FPGA, SSD hardware, firmware, and testing.
Currently, "ExaStor Technology" has initiated the Series A+ financing plan, and the funds will focus on the construction of research capabilities in three major directions: the storage-computing integration architecture, onboard distributed systems, and media reliability.
Investor's View:
The relevant person in charge of Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group stated: "Having core products and strong capabilities is the key for Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group to invest in ExaStor Technology. This investment in ExaStor Technology and the recruitment of its headquarters to Chengdu will also further promote the improvement and upgrading of the relevant industrial chain in Chengdu, injecting new impetus into creating a modern aerospace industrial cluster in Chengdu that is distinctive, element-concentrated, intelligent, high-end, open, and independent. Subsequently, Chengdu Science and Technology Innovation Investment Group will adhere to focusing on providing strong support for enterprises, serving the development of the private economy by focusing on "expanding the market, reducing costs, providing scenarios, and building platforms". Relying on the existing scientific and technological innovation resources and industrial advantages, it will further promote the functional role of state-owned enterprises in "optimizing and strengthening enterprises", and comprehensively provide post-investment empowerment for ExaStor Technology."