Fushi Technology was established in November 2017 and is headquartered in Shenzhen. It focuses on the design of lidar SPAD chips. It is an integrated circuit design enterprise, a national high-tech enterprise, and the Guangdong Provincial Human-Computer Interaction Sensor Engineering Technology Research Center. . Its products mainly include SPAD chips, optical sensing chips and 3D vision chips, which are used in smart cars, robots, smart toys, mobile phones, smart door locks, face payment and other fields. At present, the company has completed Series A and B rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 400 million yuan. Investment institutions include Lihe, China Yinhong, Xinhenglida, etc.
Although Fushi Technology has not been established for a long time, it has accumulated three major product lines: SPAD, optical sensing and face recognition. Fushi Technology CEO Mo Lianghua told 36Kr that the company expects to complete the Pre-IPO round of financing in the first half of 2022.
As the demand for autonomous driving technology in automobiles, commercial robots, AR/VR and other products increases, visual technologies such as lidar are also ushering in development. Fushi Technology has established a new technology research institute since 2019 to tackle lidar sensor chips.
APD (Avalanche Diode) is a key component used in lidar, but it has the problems of complex system, high power consumption, and high cost; the SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) originally used in the military and aerospace fields Diode) technology is used in the civilian laser field and becomes a solution.
Mo Lianghua told 36Kr that APD (Avalanche Diode) requires hundreds of photons to effectively detect, while SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) can effectively detect one photon. SPAD has been widely studied in the field of scientific research, but it is difficult to use it on a large scale for civilian use, and the threshold for productization is high. In the past, SPAD devices in the military and aerospace fields were mainly made of gallium arsenide materials. Fushi Technology has developed silicon-based SPAD, which reduces the cost to one-tenth of the original APD and can be used for civilian lidar.
In terms of the difficulty of technology research and development, Mo Lianghua told 36Kr that SPAD devices have three difficulties: First, SPAD devices are a comprehensive subject that integrates materials, processes, and design, and require a multi-faceted technical foundation to develop them. The second is the difficulty of chip design. Photons fly very fast and have short wavelengths. They need to receive multiple photons at the same time to achieve low power consumption on the chip on a high-speed circuit. The third is the anti-interference ability. SPAD has the advantage of being highly sensitive. However, ambient light and other laser radar emission signals will cause interference to the SPAD device, affecting its efficacy or even failing.
Mo Lianghua said that Fushi Technology has opened up the SPAD device and improved the detection efficiency of photons. In addition, the anti-interference ability of single-photon avalanche diodes is weak. Fushi Technology has developed a system solution to solve the anti-interference problem.
Fushi Technology’s research institute dedicated to developing lidar has nearly 40 people, including 11 Ph.D.s, some of whom are high-level professionals recruited from overseas. The institute and the company's senior chip design team spent more than two years overcoming the difficulties in process, device and circuit integration to develop SPAD lidar products, which have now begun mass production and supply.
At present, the chip is mainly used for short-distance ranging and can be used in smart toys such as sweeping robots, service robots, lawn mowing robots and Xiaopeng robot horses. Fushi has reached a strategic cooperation with a passenger car lidar company to jointly develop vehicle lidar SPAD chips and products.
In terms of visual recognition technology, Fushi Technology has accumulated a lot. In October 2018, Fushi Technology launched a 3D camera solution for payment-level recognition in Shenzhen, which further improved the security and interactive experience of face sensing based on traditional 2D face sensing technology; April 2019 In August, Fushi Technology released an LCD under-screen fingerprint solution to promote the development of thousand-yuan mobile phones; in December, its 3D structured light face recognition smart lock was mass-produced; by 2020, Fushi Technology began to research binocular 3D recognition technology .
Mo Lianghua said that Fushi Technology’s structured light visual recognition solution is the first in the world to be mass-produced on door locks. In 2021, the company’s binocular machine vision face recognition shipments will reach 5.1 million units per month, ranking first in shipments in the segment. At the same time, the world's first under-screen color temperature chip is exclusively mass-produced in flagship phones of first-tier mobile phone brands.
Currently, Fushi Technology’s products and technologies have served more than 10 industries, providing chips and complete technical solutions for mobile phones, IoT, independent mobile devices, automobiles and other terminals. More than 50 different models of chip products in six categories.
It is reported that Fushi Technology is currently cooperating with well-known domestic brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO and well-known passenger car lidar companies, and some of them have been officially mass-produced and launched.
Mo Lianghua said that Fushi Technology’s revenue in 2021 is expected to increase more than ten times compared with the same period last year, and the company’s revenue in 2022 is expected to increase another ten times.
Mo Lianghua, the founder of Fushi Technology, holds a bachelor's degree in microelectronics from Nanjing University, a master's degree in integrated circuit design from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a doctoral student at the School of Integrated Circuits at Tsinghua University. He has participated in the 908 National Microelectronics Industry Key Project and Participated in the drafting of the national standard "Biometric Identification Anti-Counterfeiting Technical Requirements". He has been deeply involved in the field of human-computer interaction for more than ten years. He led the technical team to become the world's number one in the fields of capacitive touch and TDDI. He was authorized as an inventor in the field of integrated circuit design for 100 years. He has multiple domestic and foreign patents (including 20 US patents) and is a senior expert in analog circuit design, mixed-signal chip design, chip architecture design and system design.
In terms of team members, Fushi Technology*** has more than 200 people, with R&D accounting for more than 70%. Team members have an average of more than 10 years of experience in the chip industry, and the chips they have led the design have been shipped cumulatively. Nearly 4 billion.