The R&D and design software sector, which has the lowest domestic localization rate, is the most intractable hard nut to crack: Daisy Software is seeking a new round of financing through the development path of "full-stack independent R&D + M&A + AI".
The R&D and design segment of the manufacturing industry has long been dominated by overseas industrial software giants such as Dassault, Siemens and Ansys. The domestic substitution of tool software including CAD, CAE and EDA is regarded as the most difficult part in the "core technology bottleneck tackling" initiative. Daisy Software (Daisy (Shanghai) Software Co., Ltd.), founded in 2010 with its headquarters in Shanghai, is one of the few original domestic industrial software manufacturers in China that adheres to full-stack independent R&D from underlying protocols to upper-layer applications. According to corporate disclosures, the company's new round of financing is underway, led by GPC Investment, and the funds will be used for market expansion, AI R&D investment and layout in new fields.
R&D and Design Software: The Hardest Nut to Crack in Domestic Substitution
Industrial software is known as "the soul of industry". According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the revenue of China's industrial software products reached 333 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 9.7%, with the market size continuing to expand. However, in terms of structure, industry reports generally believe that compared with ERP and operation management software, the domestic localization rate of R&D and design tools such as 3D CAD, CAE and EDA is significantly lower, which has long been dominated by overseas manufacturers. Some research institutions describe it as a "significantly lagging echelon" in domestic substitution.
This is exactly the market position where Daisy Software is located. Developing the most difficult products means a longer R&D cycle and higher technical barriers, and also means that once breakthroughs are made, both market space and competitive thresholds are established. In the past two years, AI large models have been accelerated to be implemented in industrial scenarios. "AI + R&D" is regarded as a new window for domestic manufacturers to achieve corner overtaking, and the industrial software track has thus regained attention from the primary market.
From Computing Power to Full Stack: Daisy's Solution
Daisy Software's product path is not common: it did not start with a certain CAD or CAE tool, but focused on computing power first. In 2010, founder Tang Weichang established Daisy and launched the first domestic high-performance computing platform RVCP; in 2013, the company won the bid for the TE Connectivity project and entered the supply chain of Fortune Global 500 enterprises; in 2019, it released the iDWS intelligent R&D platform. In 2023, Daisy fully acquired the global intellectual property rights, R&D teams and commercial customers of two products VPG and PreSys under the US CAE software developer ETA (according to public reports such as The Paper), and completed the domestic iteration in 2024, directly filling the product gap in the field of automotive crash safety simulation.
In terms of product system, Daisy summarizes it as a "Golden Triangle": based on the iDWS intelligent R&D platform, it integrates more than 300 CAx tools, covering the full life cycle management of requirements, products, simulation, testing and knowledge. According to corporate disclosures, it is benchmarked against the mainstream international platform 3DExperience; it is further equipped with CAxWorks simulation software, which includes product lines such as PreSys general-purpose finite element pre-processing and post-processing, and VPG vehicle engineering simulation, and complies with 14 GB standards, 14 ECE regulations, 12 FMVSS and other major market regulations. According to reports from media such as China Gongkong, CAxWorks is the only domestic crash safety software selected in the White Paper on Domestic Industrial Software Technology of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers; then the NexAI multi-business agent and computing power platform complements the "AI + computing power" capability. NexAI integrates domestic large models and RAG technology, turning links such as requirement writing, CAD drawing, simulation analysis and report generation into callable agents. According to corporate disclosures, its efficiency in the AI pedestrian protection analysis scenario has increased by 90%; PortalYun computing power cloud supports computing power scheduling in multiple regions around the world, elastic rental and Token-level billing.
The key difference of this solution lies in the "closed loop": from requirements, design and simulation to testing and knowledge management, data and tools circulate on the same base, instead of being scattered in stand-alone software as in the traditional mode. For pursuers, the acquisition in 2023 is equivalent to "buying time", eliminating the process of accumulating product maturity from scratch.
Commercialization, Team and Financing Progress
According to corporate disclosures, Daisy Software has served more than 400 enterprise customers and delivered more than 600 solutions, covering aerospace, automotive, energy, electronics, semiconductor, new energy and other fields. Its customers include Huawei, Goldwind, CATL, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Luxshare Precision, etc., with contracted revenue exceeding 60 million yuan in 2025. In terms of business model, the company is shifting from a single license authorization to a diversified model of "subscription + computing power rental + private deployment + intelligent digital services", and its sales channels are expanding from direct sales to "direct sales of key accounts + channel coverage + operator ecosystem + overseas market".
In terms of team, founder Tang Weichang graduated from Fudan University (Master, EMBA), and is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (according to corporate materials). From 2005 to 2014, he served as a high-performance computing expert at ETA in the United States. He returned to China in 2010 to found Daisy, leading the R&D of core products such as iDWS, CAxWorks and PortalYun, as well as the acquisition of ETA. The team has a combined background in computing power, simulation and AI.
In terms of financing, Daisy completed Series A financing in 2024, led by Qicheng Capital and followed by Kingdee International; in September 2025, it completed Series A+ financing, led by Jiaoying Jiaming Fund, with a scale of tens of millions of yuan (according to public reports). According to corporate disclosures, the new round of financing is led by GPC Investment, and the funds will be mainly used for the expansion of national sales and marketing teams, layout in new materials, electromagnetic microwave and other fields as well as integration of industry and education, investment in AI technology R&D, brand promotion and daily operation.
In the industry pattern, domestic manufacturers such as ZWSOFT and HEDA have landed on the capital market and established a firm foothold in the CAD and EDA segmented markets, while players such as Supreium Technology are betting on general-purpose CAE. Daisy Software has chosen a composite path of "full stack + M&A + AI", which is heavier and has a longer cycle, but also corresponds to higher barriers. In the most difficult market of R&D and design software, it still faces international giants such as Dassault and Ansys, as well as a number of players that are also eyeing the domestic substitution window; whether AI can truly reconstruct the R&D process and whether the full-stack system can be converted into scale revenue are the questions this company needs to answer next.