AI gamified creation upgrades the pan-home furnishing e-commerce. "Huiyi Technology" completes tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing | Exclusive by 36Kr

Text | Liu Chongjiang

Editor | Liu Shiwu

36Kr has learned that Huiyi Technology has completed a Series A financing of tens of millions of yuan. This round of financing was led by Lingdong Fund. The funds from this financing will be used for product iteration and market expansion.

Founded in 2018, Huiyi Technology is a big data intelligent technology company centered around lifestyle aesthetics. Relying on AI, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain, it takes the digital industrialization of its core product, "Laihui", as the starting point to drive the digital transformation and upgrading of the pan-home furnishing industry.

Ray He, the founder and CEO, told 36Kr that "Laihui" is an AI-driven aesthetic creative platform with a 3D realistic style created by Huiyi Technology. Through technologies such as real-time space generation, intelligent modeling and splitting, image rendering and super-resolution, and virtual digital humans, it ultimately enables users to practice virtual space creation in the form of "decoration games + aesthetic social interaction".

Works created by users on "Laihui"

In the actual machine demonstration, 36Kr saw that users can not only participate in gameplay such as design challenges, multi-player co-creation, and home creation, but also get inspiration for real soft furnishing matching and product purchase services. Here, users can not only recreate their favorite works on the homepage multiple times, but also customize scene materials. For example, in the living room scene, users can freely choose furniture materials such as sofas and coffee tables, and even edit the details on the basis of the selected materials, such as the leather, texture, and color of the sofa. Moreover, almost all the materials required by users in this process are designed and modeled by AI. Most of the scene templates used by users are also created in this way.

In addition, "Laihui" also meets users' social needs. For example, after completing the above creation process, users can publish their works in the community, where other users can vote, and the rewards will be determined by the number of votes.

In addition to the single-player creation mode, "Laihui" also supports multi-player creation. Users can co-create with other users through various forms such as invitations and matching, chatting while creating.

Single-player creation interface of "Laihui"

It is worth noting that strictly speaking, "Laihui" currently has no comparable competitors in China. Even when looking at similar popular foreign products such as "Redecor" and "Design home", "Laihui" has its own unique features. For example, "Redecor" and "Design home" only use 2D content forms, while "Laihui" uses both 2D/3D content forms. Therefore, in terms of picture realism, "Laihui" restores reality more vividly than the above two products, especially in the restoration of details of different materials and the delicate expression of picture light and shadow.

In other aspects, "Laihui" also performs more richly than "Redecor" and "Design home". For example, the above two foreign products do not have features such as "multi-player creation function" and "editing material details".

In summary, through gamified tools, aesthetic social interaction, and game e-commerce, "Laihui" is getting closer to the goal of becoming the 3D version of "Xiaohongshu" in the pan-home furnishing field. So, how does "Laihui" achieve these experiences?

From a technical perspective, "Laihui" has successfully developed its own image generation and super-resolution technology with low cost and high concurrency characteristics, as well as real-time video stream rendering technology. At the same time, relying on the latest real-time 3D technologies such as the 3D Gaussian algorithm, neural radiance fields, and diffusion generation algorithms, it empowers three-dimensional business scenarios, covering multiple fields such as space construction, intelligent layout, model generation, channel splitting, material generation, and beautification.

In addition, through the application of the RAG customized enhancement method of large models, "Laihui" has also realized the application and implementation of the virtual digital human business. For example, virtual characters can not only create spaces with users but also communicate with users in real-time and establish emotional exchanges. This "AI companionship" creation mode is also a major highlight of "Laihui".

Two-player creation interface of "Laihui"

From the perspective of the furniture market, although 80% of the current transaction scenarios are offline, the annual online sales volume is actually increasing. More and more young people are buying pan-home furnishing items online, such as bean bags, pillows, and carpets. It is reported that this kind of online transaction has reached a relatively high level abroad, but the penetration rate in China is only 17%. What "Laihui" aims at in the future is the rapidly growing online pan-home furnishing market.

From a business model perspective, Ray He does not regard "Huiyi" as a game company or a furniture company: "We are an AI data company centered around lifestyle aesthetics. In essence, we make money through data. On the one hand, we provide users with platform value-added services through data. On the other hand, we use data to create popular physical products in the pan-home furnishing field. In the future, all the materials used by users on 'Laihui' will support physical product purchases, which can be made within the app or linked to third-party platforms."

Currently, "Laihui" has launched two different payment plans, "Membership" and "Material Theme Packs", and users can choose according to their own needs to complete more diverse creations. Moreover, according to the data shown by Ray He to 36Kr, the retention rate of paid users of "Laihui" within 30 days is 84.54%, within 60 days is 45.5%, and within 90 days is 31.22%. Compared with the market benchmarks of 25%, 18%, and 12%, "Laihui" performs well in terms of user stickiness: "Our paid user retention rate is particularly high, and the average daily online time of paid users also exceeds 70 minutes."

Ray He also said that at present, the product of "Laihui" is still in the process of continuous improvement: "We have actually only completed 60%. Many innovative features and novel experiences have not been launched yet. In the future, we will continue to focus on the product and optimize the user experience to the extreme."