Machine Vision Empowers Intelligent Production of Optometry and Ophthalmology Products. "Pingfanghe Technology" Secures Nearly 100 Million Yuan in Series B+ Financing | Exclusive Report by 36Kr

Text by | Hu Xiangyun

Edited by | Hai Ruojing

36Kr learned that SquareSum (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "SquareSum Technology") has recently completed a nearly 100 million yuan Series B+ financing round. This round of financing was exclusively invested by the Beijing Advanced Manufacturing and Intelligent Equipment Industry Investment Fund. The funds will be mainly used for R & D, expansion, and implementation of new industry applications.

It is worth mentioning that in October 2024, SquareSum Technology just completed a financing round of hundreds of millions of yuan. The new investors in this round included Tongchuang Weiye, Yuanhe Puhua, Yahui Investment, and Xiangcheng Financial Holding, while the old shareholders Yunhui Capital, Boxing Capital, and Entropy One Capital continued to increase their investment. This also became another large - scale financing round completed by the company within one year.

SquareSum Technology was founded in 2018 and focuses on providing intelligent solutions based on computer vision systems. Dr. Cai Zhonglun, the founder, once worked at CooperVision and has more than 10 years of development experience in the field of industrial vision systems. At present, the company's main service areas are mainly the optometry and ophthalmology industry, high - end medical devices, and the pharmaceutical industry. Its cooperation customers include leading contact lens manufacturers such as CooperVision, Haichang Group, Diluo Group, Aibonuode Group, and Kangshida Group, as well as domestic and foreign pharmaceutical/medical device companies such as Sinopharm Group, Novartis, Daiichi Sankyo, Yangzijiang Pharmaceutical, Kelun Pharmaceutical, Jianfan, and Weigao.

In 2024, SquareSum Technology achieved revenues of hundreds of millions of yuan. Among them, the business related to contact lenses and optometry consumables accounted for the majority. The company expects that in the next 2 to 3 years, the contact lens business will still be the main business, but the intelligent upgrade of the pharmaceutical and other medical devices is the main development direction.

Cai Zhonglun introduced that in recent years, the transformation of traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing has been a major trend, but existing solutions often stay at the "stage of simple robot or automation equipment application". "We believe that only by taking automation equipment as the carrier and continuously forming feedback through the support of artificial intelligence technology and industrial software, and then assisting in process improvement and production process optimization, can the real intelligent manufacturing process be realized. This is exactly where SquareSum Technology's advantage lies."

Specifically in the contact lens business segment, first of all, its production volume must be very large to maintain effective profits. Taking a traditional production line with an annual output of 10 million pieces as an example, a single production line requires nearly 100 workers. According to the traditional "manual - intensive" method, to reach an annual output of 100 - 200 million pieces, about 20 production lines may need to be expanded and thousands of workers hired. Considering factors such as the current labor cost in China, this method is quite difficult to implement. "However, if an intelligent production line is used, only about 10 people are needed for one production line. Therefore, this will become the main way for relevant enterprises to expand in the later stage."

On the other hand, the machine vision inspection technology for optometry products such as contact lenses and optical lenses made of transparent materials is relatively difficult. Specifically, first, many defects on transparent materials can only be presented by special optical imaging systems; second, this is a multi - medium concept. Since contact lens products are stored in liquid, how to distinguish the defects on the lenses from the impurities in the container or liquid is also an industry problem; third, 90% of the products in Asia are colored contact lenses with printed patterns. The inspection of printed patterns itself has been an industry problem for many years. At the same time, these patterns overlap or are similar to physical defects, so more optical systems need to be developed to minimize their influence. When these difficulties are combined with the timeliness and cost control required by industrial production, a large number of emerging technologies need to be integrated and implemented to achieve a breakthrough.

Using traditional manual inspection methods has problems such as low efficiency, high training costs, and large fluctuations in quality control. In contrast, machine vision inspection can effectively make up for these deficiencies. Moreover, it can provide effective and real - time feedback data, which is very helpful for the continuous improvement of production and manufacturing.

"Although our current entry point is the quality inspection link, we have deeply integrated machine vision into the entire production process and can complete tasks such as defect attribute classification. This makes the inspection work go beyond the simple concept of ensuring good products and eliminating defective products. We can feedback relevant data to the production process. For example, by analyzing in which batches a certain type of defect appears more concentrated, we can find problems in the production process, which helps to improve future production work and increase production efficiency. These are the real ways in which the intelligent manufacturing system empowers industrial production." Cai Zhonglun explained.

It is reported that SquareSum Technology's self - owned brand Insvis mainly focuses on providing defect detection for transparent material products in the medical device and pharmaceutical fields (such as contact lenses, optical lenses, medical consumables, etc.). Especially in the field of contact lens and transparent material inspection, the company has gradually expanded to each process section of the production link, from the physical defect/surface defect inspection of contact lens production to the full - process inspection of the entire industrial chain, including printing, injection molding, mold separation, cleaning, and post - inspection packaging. Coupled with various digital and intelligent production and manufacturing equipment and industrial data platform software designed and developed by the company itself, a complete intelligent system for the contact lens industry has been established.

In June 2023, SquareSum Technology also launched the "full - process intelligent contact lens production line" for the first time in Asia, realizing the transformation of contact lens products from traditional manufacturing to intelligent manufacturing through a full - process unmanned - touch, traceable, high - capacity + intelligent production scheduling method. It is reported that after that, major customers in the contact lens industry in the Chinese mainland have adopted similar layouts.

SquareSum Technology believes that after calculation, in the next 3 to 5 years, the number of new contact lens production lines in the Chinese mainland alone will be "about 200, corresponding to a market space of billions of yuan". If the entire Asian, European, and American regions are considered, the potential market scale may be even larger.

Based on this, SquareSum Technology's business is gradually expanding from the current focus on the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, China, and surrounding Asian regions such as Southeast Asia, Japan, and South Korea, "because the colored contact lens industry has developed relatively fast in Asia". After the business in these regions matures relatively, the company will also consider focusing on expanding into the European and American markets.

In addition, SquareSum Technology is also simultaneously expanding and deploying in the markets of the biomedical and medical device/consumable inspection fields. Taking biomedical inspection as an example, SquareSum Technology has independently developed the Pharmvis pharmaceutical product line and the Medivis medical product line, which can be applied to various inspections of solid and liquid drugs, as well as the production, manufacturing, and inspection of various medical devices and consumables.

Cai Zhonglun admitted that the competition in these fields is relatively fierce, and it is necessary to balance product performance and cost - effectiveness, "to cope with the current 'involution' situation in the entire pharmaceutical industry. However, we will reduce costs through technological progress rather than simply by lowering prices to gain the market."