On August 15, 2023, Lenovo Venture Capital’s invested enterprise, motion control product supplier Gu High Tech Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Gu High Tech), was officially listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s ChiNext board. The stock is referred to as Gu High Tech, with a stock code of 301510. The issuance price is 12 yuan per share, and the opening price is 75 yuan per share, an increase of 525%. As one of the first tier suppliers of motion control in China, Gu High tech will raise funds for the industrialization, digitization, and intelligent upgrade projects of motion control systems, as well as research and innovation projects of core technology of motion control.
01
From the field of motion control
Win the championship in high-end intelligent manufacturing
Gu High Tech has a very high reputation in the field of robotics and motion control, as it is one of the few enterprises that has been committed to the research and development of core technologies in motion control and intelligent manufacturing for over 20 years. Gu High Tech was founded in 1999 by internationally renowned scholars and experts in the fields of robotics, microelectronics, and motion control, including Li Zexiang, Gao Bingqiang, and Wu Hong from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The company’s business scope includes the production and operation of motion controllers, electronic processing equipment, computer software, and automation technology development. It is the first high-tech enterprise in the Asia Pacific region to have independent intellectual property rights and specialize in the research and development of core technologies for motion control and intelligent manufacturing. It is also one of the comprehensive solutions providers for fully interconnected intelligent manufacturing at home and abroad.
He Zhiqiang, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of Lenovo Group, stated that Gugao’s solid foundation has led to an IPO, which is truly worthy of its reputation. In China, a major manufacturing country, it is only a matter of time before intelligent manufacturing leads the upgrading of the industry. However, there are many difficult sub areas that need to be overcome, and motion control is one of them. Many industrial production scenarios rely on motion control related technologies to improve the quality and efficiency of complex processes. In the context of intelligent manufacturing, it is also necessary to consider the collaboration with robots, machine vision and other related technologies in order to achieve productivity upgrades. Gu High Tech has seized the industrial manufacturing core of motion control and can launch solutions that meet the specific pain points of industrialization of control technology for multiple track users, greatly shortening the path of industrial upgrading. Lenovo Venture Capital continues to pay attention to the field of intelligent manufacturing, and the spirit of Gugao’s adherence to hard technology and industrialization is exactly what is needed for the “competition track” of intelligent manufacturing.
For the past twenty years, Gu High Tech has combined industry needs, extracted common difficulties, deeply cultivated technology and product research and development, fully integrated research and development advantages and global university resources, and provided a series of open, reconfigurable, and fully interconnected high-end equipment control and development platforms to the market, helping system integrators and equipment manufacturers assist customers in lowering the threshold of technology research and development, in order to shorten the product incubation cycle To achieve the goal of industrialization of high-end equipment.
From the perspective of product and technical system, Gugao mainly focuses on high-performance networked motion controllers and servo drives as its core products, and has developed China’s independently controllable multi master slave, peer-to-peer ring network, and high real-time industrial field network communication protocol around the products, solving the “bottleneck” problem of motion control technology from the bottom technology, It is one of the few high-end equipment manufacturing enterprises in China that master the key links of equipment manufacturing in the five major directions of “perception, control, decision-making, execution, and industrial interconnection”.
So far, Gu High Tech has deployed over 600000 sets of motion control systems for nearly 60 industries, over 2000 customers, and over 200 system integrators. The domestic marketing service network has spread to major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, Wuhan, Shenzhen, and overseas markets have extended to about 30 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe and America, becoming one of the suppliers of high-speed and high-precision motion controllers in the Chinese market.
02
Inheriting the “One Yuan Money Culture”
Directly targeting industry landing
As a leading supplier of motion control products in China, Gu High Tech is carrying the halo of being a national high-tech enterprise, a demonstration base for industry, academia, and research in Guangdong Province, a core technology platform for equipment manufacturing in the “Shenzhen Hong Kong Innovation Circle”, and the only enterprise undertaken by the Shenzhen Motion Control Technology Engineering Center. It continues to lead the way in the field of motion control technology and industry landing.
Gugao has fully controlled the pulse of the industry and created a rich product matrix: with motion control technology as the core, a product system of motion control core components, systems, and complete machines has been formed, covering the core manufacturing links of high-performance motion controllers, servo drives, drive control integrated machines, industrial automation components, industrial software, vertical industry specialized control systems, special equipment, and other equipment. The company’s technology, products, and system solutions are widely applied in many high-end equipment manufacturing fields, such as semiconductor equipment, industrial robots, CNC machine tools, 3C automation and testing equipment, printing and packaging equipment, textile equipment, etc.
The term “intelligent transformation and digital transformation” has frequently appeared in the manufacturing industry in the past two years. According to the division of digital transformation by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China has already passed the stage of informatization and business digitization, and entered the stage of digital transformation. The upgrading of industrial processes has become a key focus for manufacturing enterprises, and “machine substitution” and “flexible production” are the key to reducing costs and increasing efficiency in production. The specific production line allocation, incoming material processing, product assembly, and other specific scenarios are always in a dynamic state, which means high requirements for motion control. It is precisely by targeting the key link of motion control that Gu High Tech has helped customer enterprises take a crucial step towards machine replacement.
In 1999, a Hong Kong company with a factory in Guangdong purchased a steel processing production line from Japan for over 3 million US dollars. Surprisingly, the technology of this production line is not mature, and neither speed nor accuracy can be guaranteed. The huge cost of equipment procurement, coupled with the accumulation of raw materials, temporarily left the enterprise on the brink of bankruptcy. In order to save themselves, the business owner ran around and finally found the Gugao team, which solved the problem in just one month. At this time, although still young, Gugao demonstrated a different level of sophistication from the academic school, fully integrating technological reserves with the industrialization path, which has always been Gugao’s insistence.
In the “Technology Industry Tour” event of Lenovo Venture Capital, Gugao shared its long-standing philosophy of doing a good job in the “One Yuan Money Culture”, focusing on the field of motion control and building a basic platform. The controller needs to achieve four integration, which is to integrate perception, planning decision-making, digital twins, and knowledge graph in one controller. At the same time, Gugao also focuses on flexibility. China’s manufacturing industry has a high degree of dispersion. If flexibility is not achieved and labor costs are too high, it is difficult to achieve the best production results.
What is the “One Yuan Money Culture”? If Gugao’s motion controller only earns one yuan, its downstream equipment integrators can earn 20-50 yuan, and in the next round, equipment manufacturers can earn 200-1000 yuan… This is the “one yuan culture” advocated by Gugao people. The vision of Gugao people is like industrial control software, focusing on the entire chain, not limited to local areas.
03
Inherited in one continuous line
Creating the “Huangpu Military Academy” of Industrial Automation
Li Zexiang, the founder and chairman of Gugao, is a professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and also known as the “godfather of Xinjiang” in the industry circle. Li Zexiang was the mentor of Wang Tao, the founder of DJI, during his further studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was very helpful and devoted resources during the early days of DJI’s establishment, hence he is also known as the “Father of DJI”.
Gao Bingqiang, who has a close relationship with Li Zexiang, also serves as a director of Gu High Tech. It is worth mentioning that Professor Gao Bingqiang has paid a lot of attention to the chip industry. When searching for machine vision related startups, he noticed Xu Chen, who was still unknown, and invested in and guided him on the path of security chips. The company founded by the latter was Lenovo Venture Capital’s investee company, Security CIS leader Sitewe, which went public last year.
The “Godfather Fan Er” of Gugao Technology has a strong “academic atmosphere”. Gugao employees frankly say that working at Gugao is like working at a school, and even if they see a director, they will call him a “teacher”. This is not unrelated to Gugao’s background in “scientist entrepreneurship”, and in its initial positioning, it was committed to becoming the “Huangpu Military Academy” in the field of industrial automation in China, exporting technology and talents to the field of equipment manufacturing and industrial automation in China. Solid high-tech practices speak louder than words, actively exploring a model of combining technology cooperation and talent incubation in the field of intelligent manufacturing. Gao Bingqiang, a director of Gugao High tech, once said, “The previous industrial chain was a ‘production+research’ model. In order to drive the transformation and upgrading of the equipment manufacturing industry chain, Gugao is exploring an integrated model of government industry, academia, research and investment
The inheritance of the “One Yuan Money Culture” has also enabled Gu High Tech to not only cultivate technical elites, but also cultivate industrial heroes. One of the co founders, Wu Hong, once stated that Gugao’s talent cultivation is divided into three directions: learning, going to the company, or starting your own business. The earliest batch of employees in the company were basically starting their own businesses. Gugao aims to become a bridge between industry, academia, and research, spreading researchers to the market, continuously cultivating relevant talents, and allowing the market and technology to develop synchronously
It is precisely by never forgetting the implementation and implementation of technological achievements, revitalizing the ecology, and consolidating high-tech that, while continuously deepening its own internal power, also promotes the growth of the entire industrial control field. Since 1999, it has been on the stage of IPO.