China National leads the way as Chorium Laser completes a new round of funding of RMB 200 million

Recently, Chorium Laser completed a new round of financing of RMB 200 million, jointly led by two national teams, China Development Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Fund and China Investment and Entrepreneurship. The financing will be used for continuous R&D investment and new business expansion.

Founded in August 2014, Chorium Laser is a hard technology company with the design, development and manufacturing of ultrafast lasers and high energy lasers as its main business. As a comprehensive laser supplier with the most comprehensive technology coverage in China, it has developed more than 10 series and 50 types of lasers. The products are widely used in consumer electronics, new energy, semiconductor, research and medical industries, and have been exported to Korea, Japan, Singapore and Israel.

At present, the company has acquired more than 100 core intellectual property rights, and has been awarded the honorary qualification of national "Small Giant" enterprise, post-doctoral research station, Beijing enterprise science and technology research and development institution, and national high-tech enterprise. The company has passed the ISO 9001 quality management system and ISO 13485 medical device quality management system certification.

01Entrepreneurship, seizing the opportunity given by the times

At the beginning of the millennium, Wang Tao, who was hesitating about the direction of his profession, was struck by a phrase: "The 21st century is the century of bioengineering and optoelectronics". Perhaps it was the invisible hand of fate that pulled him to apply for a degree in optoelectronics in the Department of Precision Instruments at Tianjin University, and from then on, he had an inseparable relationship with lasers.

In 2008, after graduating from the Xi'an Institute of Optics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wang Tao entered a Canadian-owned laser company. "At that time, this industry was almost exclusively foreign brands, and domestic brands either did relatively low-end products or had a small market share."

In fact, in the field of laser technology research, China has been closely tracking the world's frontiers. 1961 saw the birth of China's first ruby laser under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, almost keeping pace with the world. "But in the industrial world we have a very big gap. The first laser company in the US was established in 1961, while related companies only emerged in China after 2000. The simultaneous development of scientific research and industry is one of the main reasons why foreign brands have a first-mover advantage." Wang Tao said.

In the Chinese Academy of Sciences of the study career, let Wang Tao witnessed the old generation of scientists for the development of China's laser technology struggle and pay, but also let their shoulders more a heavy sense of mission. In the process of working in foreign enterprises, Wang Tao gradually sorted out the cognitive map of the laser industry chain. In his view, the midstream of the industry chain, where lasers are located, plays an important role in carrying on the development of the Chinese laser industry chain without the support of strong domestic laser enterprises. At that time, there was no listed company in the midstream of the domestic laser industry chain.

In 2014, Wang Tao and two other partners raised one million dollars to start Zhuo Radium Laser, aiming to become the first brand of domestic lasers.

02Small steps: industrial, scientific research, medical "flowering" in turn

In 2014, the domestic ultrafast laser market was dominated by global giants such as IPG, Germany's TongFast, the US Coherent and Lithuania's LC. As a start-up company, where can you open up an opening?

With no brand recognition and a small capital volume, the choice of strategic route is crucial for the start-ups. In terms of global laser market applications, the industrial market holds the majority share, followed by the research and military markets. Industrial customers have a high demand for cost control and service localisation, and a stronger willingness to import substitution, so industrial customers are bound to be one of the main targets for Chorium in the future.

However, as an entry point, the industrial market is a very "difficult" position. Industrial customers have very high requirements for product stability and consistency, and being able to provide customers with a prototype that runs consistently and stably is the first step to getting a "ticket". In contrast, research customers are more focused on technical specifications and are more friendly to technology-driven start-ups. With the accumulation of core technology, Zhuo Radium started to get some sporadic orders from scientific users.

But the difficulties came more quickly than expected. "Although I was prepared for nine deaths before starting the business, what I didn't expect was that only three months after its establishment, the $1 million capital was spent." What makes Wang Tao very sentimental is that in 2015, the Xi'an Institute of Optical Machinery of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he studied during his master's degree, was vigorously supporting the industrialisation of cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements, and they were very optimistic about Zhuo Radium's technology accumulation and development space, and the two sides established a strategic partnership, which solved the urgent need for early funding for Zhuo Radium Laser.

Luck always favours those who are prepared. In the second half of 2014, a medical device company in the United States began to promote a device called "picosecond spot removal device" in China, which caught Wang Tao's attention. He had a feeling that this would be an important new product layout, and to his surprise, the company received a registration certificate from the CFDA in China in 2015. This high-end medical device is monopolised by this company from the laser light source to the whole system, and the market price of a set of equipment is nearly $3 million, and the demand is very strong.

As the core component of the device, there is a huge market demand for lasers. In the second half of 2016, Zorra Laser broke the technology monopoly and successfully launched the medical aesthetic picosecond laser, which quickly became the first in the domestic market share and exported to Korea, Israel and other international first-tier system providers. 2017, the company took advantage of the success and continued to upgrade technology, further expanding the high-end market and overseas market share, the year only medical The sales revenue of the product line alone reached nearly RMB 30 million that year.

ALICE-PS series medical picosecond lasers, ALICE-NS series Q-modulated nanosecond lasers, ALICE-NS(C) series Q-modulated nanosecond lasers

This "turnaround" in the medical field has enabled Chorium to escape from the dilemma of "survival" and to reserve sufficient ammunition for the development of ultrafast lasers in the industrial field. Since its inception, the company has been investing in the development of ultrafast laser microprocessing products, and has been the first in China to achieve 100kHz, >100W IR and >30W UV picosecond laser output, which can be used for cutting and drilling brittle materials and fine processing of superhard materials.

GENIUS Series UV picosecond lasers

On 13 September 2017, the Iphone X was launched on the market. As a special edition for the 10th anniversary of the iPhone series, the iPhone X abandoned the original home button and used the shaped bangs screen, bringing the mobile phone industry into the full-screen era and opening the door for the official entry of the Chorlaser laser into the industrial field.

"From the technical principle, we are firmly optimistic about the absolute advantage of ultrafast lasers in micro processing, and we have been waiting for that application scenario to emerge." Like a hunter waiting to close the net, Zorra strikes with lightning speed when the opportunity arises and harvests the results sharply.

In 2018, with its self-developed Blazer series picosecond lasers, Chorium competed with international manufacturers and won the favour of large domestic panel shippers with its excellent performance, achieving the world's top ranking in laser shipments for mobile phone full-screen cutting. Wang Tao sees this success as an important milestone: "It has greatly boosted the team's confidence that we have achieved domestic surpassing in some niche areas."

BLAZER series ultrafast picosecond lasers

The BLAZER series of medium power picosecond lasers are suitable for the processing of brittle transparent materials such as sapphire and glass, metal micromachining, flexible PCB board micromachining and many other areas.

03Reaching for bigger dreams

The prosperity of the industry chain is related to each link in the upstream, midstream and downstream. Wang Tao introduced, "China's laser industry in the upper reaches of the basic components, in research institutes for generations of joint efforts, has achieved very good results; midstream lasers, although the technical performance is still in the catch-up state, but most of them can be self-made, and even in some segments to achieve leadership, for example, continuous fiber laser for metal cutting, early foreign brands For example, continuous fiber lasers for metal cutting, which accounted for more than 2/3 of the market share in the early days, are now less than 40%, and are continuing to decline, a trend that is irreversible."

What makes Wang Tao even more pleased is that, with the "strong chain to complement the chain" in the past two years has become a strategic proposition about the development of the laser in the downstream applications began to multi-point "flowering". "Previously, like the chip, semiconductor production line and related process scenario is not in China for a long time, so it will be a long-term foreign brand monopoly, we simply do not have the opportunity. But in the last year or two, semiconductors are the fastest growing area of business for Zorium." According to Wang Tao, at present, the layout of Zhuo Radium in the industrial field is more than 50%, involving consumer electronics, semiconductor, photovoltaic, lithium and other major directions. In the semiconductor field alone, Chorium Laser has developed nearly ten special laser products, and the product line is being further enriched.

Based on scientific research and development of industry, this is the big strategic line established by Chorium Laser from the beginning of its foundation, which remains unchanged today. However, in the process of development, many small strategic adjustments are made outside the "design". How to grasp the key "opportunities" under the big strategic direction, Wang Tao summed up two tips: Firstly, we have to "immerse" ourselves in the industry, the depth of understanding of the industry determines the entrepreneur's strategic planning ability; secondly, we have to form our own Resources are always scarce in the development of an enterprise, so how to make a good prediction and do a good allocation in a phased manner determines how far the enterprise can go.

On the way to go farther, Wang Tao hopes to walk with his partners. How to make Zhuo Radium a group of people's business is a question he has been thinking about since the first day of his business. Now, the biggest single shareholder of Zorium Laser is not the institution or the founder, but the employee shareholding platform. Through the implementation of the "partner system", more and more employees have become the owners of this business. Wang Tao still remembers that a colleague who participated in the establishment of the Xi'an subsidiary in 2017 sold a house in order to become a "shareholder" of the company. Carrying these trust and expectations, Wang Tao frankly said that it is strength and pressure. Today, she has grown into the core backbone of the company.

The average age of Zhuo Radium's staff is around 30 years old, and more and more post-95s and even post-00s are entering the company and growing rapidly here. As a post-80s entrepreneur, Wang Tao sees no age difference in the professionalism, hard work and diligence in everyone. "Building a first-class Chinese national brand requires the efforts of generation after generation, backed by the accumulation of time bit by bit and proven by concrete examples one after another. We are fortunate to be part of such a wave of the times, which is both an opportunity and an honour."