36Kr Exclusive丨The veteran reducer manufacturer invested by Dachen has completed a Series B financing of hundreds of millions of yuan, and has supplied products to a number of leading robot enterprises.

Author | QIAO Yujie

Editor | YUAN Silai

This article is about 1,500 words, with an estimated reading time of 3 minutes

36Kr has learned that recently, Zhejiang Sankai Electromechanical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sankai Electromechanical") announced the completion of several hundred million yuan in Series B equity financing. This round of financing is jointly led by the Industrial Mother Machine Industry Investment Fund and Wuzhou Zhongda Investment, with Caitong Capital and Wenling Haihe Rongzhi participating as follow-on investors. The raised funds will be mainly used to deepen R&D and iteration of the integrated technology of joint reducer and drive for humanoid robots, expand the production capacity of precision reducers, and accelerate the process of domestic substitution of high-end transmission components. At the end of last year, Sankai Electromechanical obtained a Series A financing of over 100 million yuan led by Dachen Caizhi.

Founded in 2007, Sankai Electromechanical is one of the earliest domestic enterprises to carry out independent R&D and mass production of precision planetary reducers, which achieved mass production in 2012. Jiang Jianbin, founder and CEO of Sankai Electromechanical, introduced to 36Kr that the planetary reducers of Sankai Electromechanical have been widely used in the domestic automation field at present.

It is introduced that the precision planetary gear reducer of Sankai Electromechanical, with its unique tooth profile modification technology, can stably control the return difference within 1 arc minute, with high torsional rigidity, which can ensure the processing stability and ultra-high precision of industrial mother machines under heavy load and high speed. At the same time, the reducer adopts high-quality alloy steel and core heat treatment process, and ranks in the first echelon in China in terms of processing consistency relying on the improvement of precision control and assembly process.

At present, the company's precision reducers have been widely used in machine tools and CNC, AGV/AMR, photovoltaic lithium battery, medical imaging, filling equipment, 3C electronics, UAV steering gear, iron and steel metallurgy and other industries, which can realize import substitution and cost reduction.

In 2022, with the rise of humanoid robots, Sankai Electromechanical also set up a robot service team to develop planetary reducers and harmonic reducers suitable for robots.

In the same year, the company launched harmonic reducers for the robot field, independently developed high-precision conjugate tooth profile to realize multi-tooth meshing; by optimizing the tooth profile design and using special fatigue-resistant materials, the bearing capacity is greatly improved compared with domestic standard products; meanwhile, it is small in size and light in weight, adapting to the strict space and weight limits of multi-joint robots, and can be used for six-axis and four-axis industrial robots.

In 2024, the company specially launched a planetary joint reducer more suitable for humanoid robot joints. Through topological optimization and special-shaped integrated design, it achieves a high torque-to-weight ratio and torque-to-volume ratio, providing a power foundation for humanoid robots.

At present, Sankai Electromechanical has in-depth cooperation with many leading domestic robot complete machine manufacturers, and has entered the core supply chain system of many leading robot enterprises including the Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, realizing stable mass supply.

It is worth noting that at the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games held in August this year, the Tiangong series of robots won a total of 45 medals, including 15 gold, 12 silver and 18 bronze, and refreshed the industry records in multiple events such as speed racing, high jump, long jump and weightlifting, whose core joint components are provided by Sankai Electromechanical.

To adapt to the complex, variable, high-impact and high-load motion conditions of humanoid robots, Sankai Electromechanical has invested over 100 million yuan in equipment in the past two years, and is comprehensively upgrading hardware equipment for production and processing, precision testing, R&D and experiments.

Based on the expected growth of the humanoid robot industry in the future, at the beginning of this year, the company's second-phase plant, namely the project with an annual output of 1 million sets of precision gear reducers, started construction, with a total floor area of more than 60,000 square meters. After the project reaches full production, it will add an annual production capacity of one million sets of precision gear reducers, supporting intelligent production lines for servo motors and integrated drives, upgrading flexible production and mass delivery capabilities, and it is estimated that the new annual output value will be about 1 billion yuan.

Q&A with the Founder:

36Kr: What are the differences in the requirements for planetary reducers between industrial mother machines and humanoid robots? What expansions will be made in the humanoid robot direction in the future?

Jiang Jianbin: The core demand of humanoid robots for reducers is lighter, thinner and smaller, but the basic structure is similar to that of products used in industrial mother machines, with high technology reusability, and there are only differences in size and process. The company has set up a special production line for this purpose.

At present, the R&D in the robot direction is making breakthroughs towards the modular form of "motor + reducer". As customers put forward the demand for supporting motors one after another, the company's goal is to provide plug-and-play, highly integrated joint modules. However, different robot manufacturers have different algorithms and application scenarios, so the driver often needs to be customized in multiple versions for different customers, and most mainstream manufacturers develop their own drivers. Therefore, the company will not get involved in driver design in the next few years, and only focus on the mechanical part, that is, the integrated design of "motor + reducer".

Investor's Viewpoint

Series B Lead Investor Fund: Precision transmission components are one of the "stuck neck" core components of humanoid robots and high-end equipment. Sankai Electromechanical has profound accumulation in the field of precision transmission, which has been widely verified in the domestic automation market. We are optimistic about its leading position in the domestic substitution process of core components for humanoid robots and its large-scale development potential.