36KR learned that Zhice Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as “Zhice Technology”) announced the completion of tens of millions of yuan seed round financing, and the investor is Shunwei Capital. This round of investment funds are mainly used for product research and development and marketing.

“Zhice Technology” was established in 2021, is a focus on complex manufacturing, the development of artificial intelligence technology based industrial software company, mainly focused on the application of artificial intelligence in complex manufacturing business scenarios, to help industrial enterprises improve the production process, rapid improvement of quality, carbon emission, production efficiency and other core indicators. The core product of Zhice Technology is Zhice Industrial intelligence platform, which provides intelligent solutions for different industrial problems based on the platform’s AI algorithm capabilities and data integration capabilities.

Han Yan, CEO of “Zhize Technology”, told 36kR that one of the biggest pain points for industrial enterprises is that traditional software takes a long time to solve process problems. Traditional software is based on experience-based qualitative analysis, through the “hypothesis – verification” trial and error method to solve, difficult, long cycle, high cost, sometimes a problem may spend several years and a large number of production and test costs can not find a solution. This means that the applicability, agility and economics of traditional methods can no longer meet the needs of modern industry.

“Take the quality problem in the steel industry as an example, we have a customer with a product pass rate of 70%, they want to increase the pass rate to 90%, if solved this problem, the product will save at least 150 million dollars a year.” Because the process of the steel industry is very complex, involving tens of thousands of parameters, it is extremely difficult for traditional software based on mechanism models to locate the cause from tens of thousands of parameters, “Han Yan said,” With the artificial intelligence quality solution based on actual data, you can give engineers an improved solution in 3 months, from the past project experience. Quality defects can be reduced by about 20% on average.”

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Based on a new generation of AI technology, “ZhicAI Technology” uses production data under real environment for training, quickly establishes quantitative models for complex industrial problems whose mechanism is yet to be studied, and supports large-scale scene analysis and simulation, which greatly improves the accuracy and applicability of the models. To solve the problem that traditional industrial software can not solve. “The artificial intelligence mentioned by everyone in previous years is more at the level of data collection and display, which often requires the business side to dig the data value behind it.” Our focus is to use the latest generation of artificial intelligence technology to help enterprises complete analysis and make decisions, and give more direct solutions, “Han Yan said.

The industrial intelligence platform of Zhice Technology is composed of three parts: general algorithm engine, low code development engine and data asset engine. Based on the industrial intelligence platform of Zhice, “Zhice Technology” has created the first industrial AI application – whole-process quality analysis and process optimization. This application includes quality process evaluation, engineering quantitative model, defect cause analysis, process simulation optimization and other parts to achieve interactive quality process analysis between engineers and AI.

“There are two main types of similar industrial software on the market. One is the use of artificial intelligence platform software, the advantage of this category is that artificial intelligence algorithms and infrastructure are better, but their biggest problem is that they do not understand industry “, Han Yan introduced, “They have a lot of understanding of general artificial intelligence technology, but there is a big gap between industrial artificial intelligence and general artificial intelligence. There needs to be a lot of customization and adaptation based on the business understanding of the industry.” The other category is software vendors who focus on a certain industry area, and they have a good understanding of the industry, but the level of AI technology is insufficient. “Our biggest advantage is that we understand both AI and industry, and that also has to do with the DNA of our team.”

CEO Han Yan used to be a senior algorithm scientist in Dassault Systemes. The founding team of “Zhice Technology” are from international large enterprises such as Dassault Systemes industrial software. They have more than 20 years of experience in industrial software and have done many large-scale industrial artificial intelligence business landing projects in Europe for a long time.

“Zhice Technology” target customers are industrial enterprises with very complex processing processes, currently focusing on the steel industry, has served China Baowu, Nanjing Iron and Steel, and has established cooperation intentions with other leading customers in a number of segments. In addition, the company is also expanding to the lithium battery, chemical, pharmaceutical, power generation, petrochemical and other industries, and has established in-depth communication with some leading enterprises in the industry.

In the next step, “Zhice Technology” will focus on the existing quality analysis, continue to use AI technology, including in-depth analysis of key processes, intelligent control of key equipment and other solutions.

Investor view:

Li Rui, partner of Shunwei Capital, said: “China’s industrial intelligent optimization industry is still in the early stage of development, with low penetration rate and great potential for future development. At this stage, the investment in digitalization and automation in the steel industry has been relatively complete, with the prerequisites for intelligent optimization, and the budget is also tilted toward intelligent optimization. Zhice’s founding team has deep understanding and rich experience in the steel industry and AI field, and has successfully landed cases in the head steel enterprises. We look forward to the company’s future based on its underlying industrial intelligence platform, in more customers and scenarios to achieve optimization and efficiency, and contribute to China’s intelligent manufacturing.”