From the brink of bankruptcy to becoming a unicorn, xTool is still waiting for the "big outcome".

Written by Zhang Ziyi

Edited by Yuan Silai

As a company whose reputation in the hardware circle is second only to Bambu Lab, xTool has been far too low-profile.

Ordinary people may not be familiar with its products, and it is hard to imagine that it has achieved an annual revenue of 2 billion yuan relying on niche products such as laser engravers.

The beginning of this year was probably the most glorious moment for xTool. It submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming one of the few hardware startups that have reached the listing stage. When Bambu Lab has not made progress in its listing for the time being, investors expect xTool to become "the next Insta360".

The subsequent turn of the story is unexpected. Hard Krypton has verified through multiple sources that xTool's progress of listing in Hong Kong was once affected to a certain extent due to structural reasons, but it has submitted a new confidential listing application again.

Wang Jianjun, founder of xTool, is no stranger to such ups and downs.

xTool's predecessor Makeblock was once a star enterprise among STEAM education companies, but it was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2021 with only tens of millions of yuan on its books. At the most difficult time, Wang Jianjun took his team to roadshows everywhere, and even tried to bid for the overseas e-commerce agency of a projection company.

Against the top-to-bottom internal pressure, Wang Jianjun launched the D1, an all-in-one desktop laser engraving and cutting machine. This product boosted the company's revenue to hundreds of millions of yuan, and in less than four years, relying on several products in niche tracks, it grew into a unicorn with an annual revenue of 2 billion yuan.

However, for Chinese hardware startups, the blue ocean only exists for a very short period of time. xTool cannot escape the fierce siege either.

According to xTool's prospectus, its year-on-year growth rate in the first three quarters of 2025 saw a significant decline. However, Hard Krypton learned that xTool's revenue rebounded in the fourth quarter, and its full-year revenue in 2025 increased by more than 30% year-on-year. In the first half of this year, xTool's revenue increased by about 80%-90%.

This does not mean that xTool can rest easy.

"Quite a number of competitors have emerged in the track, and everyone is suddenly on high alert," an investor told Hard Krypton.

Contrary to common sense, xTool's competitors are not similar peers at all. In the view of several investors, 3D printing and CNC both have the potential to partially replace or even completely replace laser engraving products. At the beginning of 2025, Bambu Lab launched a device integrating 3D printing, laser engraving and cutting, CNC knife cutting and drawing.

Bambu Lab has obviously reaped the benefits. It officially released the consumer-grade CO₂ laser cutter R1 in September this year, with a minimum price of 2499 US dollars, while the price of xTool's similar product is around 3000 US dollars. Obviously, Bambu Lab will directly target xTool and become its most powerful competitor.

The rise of xTool and the siege it is facing now is like a fable in the hardware industry. It represents the extreme that an excellent founder can lead the company to achieve in a niche track. The cruelty also lies in this: in the global hardware manufacturing center, a hit product is just the beginning, followed by an endless uphill battle against the current.

01 A do-or-die battle in desperate situation

Inspiration is not necessarily the origin of success, but despair often is. xTool's success is actually a narrow victory, and Wang Jianjun has demonstrated excellent judgment.

He is a very flexible-minded person. After graduating with a master's degree, Wang Jianjun went to work in Shenzhen, but resigned in less than a year, "carrying a backpack and dived into a hardware incubator," recalled an industry insider.

Wang Jianjun founded the hardware company Makeblock out of interest. It was 2012, three years before the "mass entrepreneurship" initiative, and Wang Jianjun had already followed the incubator to Silicon Valley to attend the demo day. He was featured in Fast Company magazine, secured investments from HSG and TMC, and the company's valuation had reached 3 billion yuan by 2020.

No one expected that a year later, Makeblock would be on the verge of bankruptcy due to the superposition of the pandemic and the "double reduction" policy.

"There were really only tens of millions of yuan left in the account, the company basically had no positive revenue, and we kept burning the deposits from previous investors. It was really a do-or-die situation," recalled a former employee.

It is hard for employees to realize how much pressure Wang Jianjun was under. "Because you can hardly see real exhaustion or emotional instability on him." They only found that the boss had changed, "He said he would no longer look for a way out from his own dreams, but from business opportunities."

Wang Jianjun made various attempts. To this day, you can still see products he made during the trough period on xTool's Kickstarter page, including children's robots and drone accessories. The performance of these products was not satisfactory.

More often, Wang Jianjun spent time researching overseas data marketing tools. He used plugins to find the search volume of different categories on Amazon, and finally found that laser products sold well, and most of them were low-quality white-label products. This means that no brand seller had emerged in the entire laser track.

However, when Wang Jianjun proposed to make laser products, everyone opposed it. Because Makeblock launched the Laser box in 2019, "it could not sell several units a month, and it often broke down," the aforementioned former employee recalled.

Wang Jianjun saw a different picture from his employees.

Compared with the era of Laser Box, the biggest improvement of lasers in those years was power. Similar to Moore's Law in the computer industry, the power of lasers doubled every one or two years, and by 2021, it had reached 5 watts — which means the laser could cut harder materials.

"xTool seized the opportunity of the supply chain upgrade (the development of laser beam combining technology), and they did not act on a whim, but had the R&D foundation of laser products," a founder in the Maker track told Hard Krypton.

Another point is the grasp of the user group.

Wang Jianjun found that the users of consumer-grade laser engravers back then were geeks and makers, who longed for the fun of hands-on creation. The Laser Box failed because it was a closed box that could not show the creation process, but an open laser engraving machine would have different results.

No one understood Wang Jianjun's insistence, but because of his absolute right to speak in the company, the product was pushed forward at a very fast speed.

In 2021, xTool's first-generation product D1 was launched. It is an open all-in-one blue light laser engraving and cutting machine focusing on 5w and 10w power. Although the power is not large by current standards, the D1 at that time accumulated extremely high reputation in the overseas DIY circle with its sturdy aluminum alloy structure and high-precision steel wheel guide rail. Until the D1 was discontinued at the beginning of last year, some YouTube bloggers still lamented that the D1 they bought in 2021 had not had any fatal hardware failures in five years.

Relying on this single product, Makeblock added 300 million yuan to its accounts. And Wang Jianjun's requirement for the team was very simple: be fast, be faster.

In 2022, xTool released three products, including the upgraded version of D1, the box-type all-in-one laser cutting machine M1, and the F1 adopting dual light source technology. The company's revenue grew at a rate of 600%. "It felt like the small tens of millions of yuan suddenly turned into hundreds of millions of yuan," recalled a former xTool employee. By 2023, xTool had launched four product lines, with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan.

xTool was not without competitors back then. Angtu, Atom Manufacturing, and Haixing Technology had been making consumer-grade laser tools longer than it, but none of them grew as fast as xTool.

Tommy, an early employee of xTool and an entrepreneur in the Maker track, believes that what made xTool far surpass other consumer-grade laser engraving companies of the same period is Wang Jianjun's "taste". "He understands what a good product is."

Across the ocean, Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, the top American startup incubator, regards taste as a pragmatic financial asset — an irreplicable human ability to figure out what can make money or attract public attention.

Among the early companies with top sales in the industry, bosses with trade background have a keen business sense and are very good at selling goods; bosses with factory background have strong supply chain integration capabilities and high product cost-effectiveness, but both of them have relatively weak control over products. At that time, many users were small B-end users, who used laser engravers to make products for sale. They were not necessarily sensitive to price, but required high reliability.

"Reliability is not a concept that can be specifically quantified, but it is reflected in factors such as product quality, product experience and services. It constitutes users' trust in the brand. Companies with product background are strong in this point: they know to spend time and resources to build a good brand, obtain higher premiums, and then use the premiums to further consolidate the brand's capabilities," Tommy told Hard Krypton.

Obviously, in addition to not chasing the quick money of selling goods, Wang Jianjun also knows how to build a brand. For example, he built the xTool product matrix at a very fast speed, forming four product lines M, P, S and F, which cover multi-function entry, high-power processing, desktop general use and portable fine carving scenarios respectively. The product form has gradually evolved from open to fully enclosed, home appliance-style and multi-light source integrated.

This strategy is extremely smart. "They don't have to start R&D completely from scratch. Instead, based on a relatively complete technology and product platform, they recombine existing functions to quickly launch products for different niche groups," an employee of a consumer-grade laser engraving company told Hard Krypton.

With reliable products and a complete product matrix, the combination of the two has made xTool almost redefine the consumer-grade laser engraver category.

"If you search for 3D printing on Google, 3D printing itself has the highest data volume, followed by Bambu Lab. But when you search for laser engraving, the popularity of xTool even exceeds the popularity of the category. I think there is no other brand that can reach such a level of user mindshare," an investor analyzed.

02 The lost year

Wang Jianjun, with the attitude of a revolutionary, completely transformed the consumer-grade laser engraving track.

But soon, xTool fell into the classic innovator's dilemma.

The main contributors to the rise of xTool are a large number of small B-end users. In overseas regions without Alibaba and Chinese factories, individual handmade studios and Etsy sellers produce products mainly in their own garages. 3D printers and laser engravers are necessary production tools for this group of people, and these core users are the key to xTool's revenue growth from hundreds of millions of yuan to tens of billions of yuan.

However, for a hardware company to grow from a unicorn to a giant, it must break through from the B-end to the C-end. The most typical example is Bambu Lab. Its customers are no longer limited to print farms and studios. Both the primary market and Bambu Lab itself envision that it will become a home creative entertainment device in the future.

"It's just like the Subor game console. In the past, every family had a game console. In the future, parents may say 'stop playing games, come and use the 3D printer to make something'," an investor analyzed. Bambu Lab's valuation of tens of billions of US dollars is precisely built on such a broad imagination.

However, xTool has not yet found a breakthrough point.

"In 2024, we have come to a conclusion that the growth of laser tools began to weaken, and the market is already saturated. Unless there can be a breakthrough and explosion like the base point technology breakthrough in the 3D printing industry," a former employee of xTool recalled.

It is hard to say that xTool has not made attempts. Throughout 2025, xTool launched six products across three categories, including laser engraving and cutting machines, DTF garment printers, and laser welding machines, with prices ranging from 2000 US dollars to 10000 US dollars.

During that period, xTool was somewhat flustered, groping for product lines beyond laser engraving.

"We can't do enough market education, and the price is too high," the aforementioned former employee recalled.

At the same time, 2025 was also a year for xTool to try to accelerate the capitalization process.

xTool's investors have waited for it for too long. The successful transformation is a pleasant surprise, and it is imperative to harvest the fruits of IPO. What's more, during that period, capital's favorite target turned to hardware. The Maker track was hotly sought after, and the competition became more intense.

In the first half of last year, Liu Yao, former CFO of Tuya Smart, joined xTool to take charge of financial and related work. The company also experienced business and organizational adjustments internally at that time. Wang Jianjun began to go into seclusion at that time, concentrating all his energy on developing new products.

Looking back, Wang Jianjun also made decision-making mistakes in 2025, such as missing the UV Printer — a machine that uses UV light to cure special ink and print patterns on objects. Many overseas users like to use it to make T-shirts.

In 2024, xTool once discussed the UV Printer internally, but Wang Jianjun did not pay attention to it. He did not explain too many reasons, and the whole matter was left unsettled.

Until the summer of 2025, Anker's eufymake UV Printer raised 46.76 million US dollars in crowdfunding on Kickstarter, setting a historical record.

The outside world has no way to know whether Wang Jianjun regretted facing the success of eufymake, and he did not show too much emotion to others.

The only thing that can be seen is that xTool became a follower and also launched a UV printer in 2026. Moreover, in xTool's prospectus, the printing line has become the company's second business growth curve.

In an interview in 2025, Wang Jianjun once said: "We are clearly aware that many competitors are pouring into this field. To maintain a leading position, the primary strategy is to win by speed... followed by innovation, which requires huge resource input and risk tolerance. Some attempts may fail, but as long as the trend-leading breakthrough succeeds, it is enough."

However, xTool does not seem to have found a second "trend-leading breakthrough".

03 Another solution

When the C-end market failed to see an outbreak for a long time, xTool shifted part of its power to the large B-end market.

KA users are a user group that xTool has always wanted to expand in the past, but retailers have very high requirements for the ease of use and stability of equipment, and xTool has not found a suitable entry point before.

It was not until this year that xTool launched the ultraviolet laser engraver F2 Ultra that it really penetrated into this market.

Compared with traditional blue light lasers, 355nm ultraviolet laser has a shorter wavelength and less thermal impact, which can finely process materials that were difficult to handle in the past, such as plastic and glass. In the past, due to the higher cost of the laser and optical system of such machines, and the high difficulty of adjusting the stability of the whole machine and material technology, few enterprises could make consumer-grade ultraviolet laser engravers.

The F2 Ultra, which is dominated by cold processing, is very suitable for commercial scenarios with higher requirements for material types and processing accuracy, such as consumer electronics and retail customization.

Hard Krypton learned that the F2 Ultra has allowed xTool to open up domestic key customer channels, and its cooperative customers include Huawei, Stanley, Starbucks, etc.

An employee of xTool's peer told Hard Krypton that in the expansion of KA channels, xTool not only sells equipment, but also a complete set of solutions adapted to customer scenarios. "For example, after entering Huawei's stores, xTool will test the engraving parameters for Huawei's products on sale in advance, and pre-set the corresponding solutions in the software, so that store users can directly select the corresponding products to complete the engraving." According to his understanding, the overall selling price of this ultraviolet laser engraving solution is about 37,000 yuan.

This lowers the threshold for store employees to use the equipment, and also turns laser engraving from a machine that requires professional parameter adjustment into a standardized service that can be directly embedded in retail scenarios.

Hard Krypton learned that in terms of the way to expand KA customers, xTool often adopts the method of pilot first and then replication: first verify the equipment and solutions in