2021.08.20 CoStone Capital Views:
SmartMore closed its $200Mn dollars series B funding, emerging as a unicorn. After participated in series A funding, CoStone Capital enhances its investment in series B funding.
On the foundation of technical advantage, questions such as changing its technical advantage to product advantage, matching with the market demand, and putting the technology into specific industry are a tough challenge for a start-up technology company. To answer that, SmartMore’s technology and business team go hand-in-hand to present a perfect answer.
The industry is experiencing a transition from digital to intelligent setting. As one of the new generations of AI companies, SmartMore focuses on the development of Empowering Industries. From CoStone Capital’s initial investment to now, the team created the first global industrial AI operating system, providing services for over ten top customers in the industry within a year. According to CoStone, “SmartMore’s sophisticated expertise and solid practicability truly impressed us. We hope the enterprise will continue promote the industrial development and lead an innovation.” To define the range of enabling, SmartMore decided to focus on intelligent manufacture at the start of its establishment, paving a solid path for AI industrialization. Furthermore, SmartMore also leap from software algorithm to software and hardware integration products. Up till today, SmartMore had already produced over 30 intelligent manufactured integration products in the fields of vehicle manufacture, consumer electronics, semiconductor, and precision optics.
Take vehicle manufacture as an example. Last October, SmartMore's bearing AI examination machine has been trial operated on the production line in one of the top 500 global automobile components manufacturer. This product greatly shortened the original examination process, automatically detecting 23 types of defections. Not only can this product increase the efficiency of quality inspection to 80%, but it also increases the accuracy of inspection close to 100%. Now, the product is officially launched. This is also the first time the company introduced AI products into its mainstream product line of passenger car.
In the field of precision optics, SmartMore cooperated with the leading global optical enterprise to build an intelligent factory. After 4 months of developing material and breakthrough in AI technology, SmartMore is the first to achieve auto-coding and reading QR code on optical lens. SmartMore also successfully developed AI lens recognition, analysis, sorting, and packaging integrated machine. This machine may print an invisible QR code on every lens, meaning the lens is equipped with invisible “ID card.” With SmartMore’s integrated machine, it can analysis over 50 types of data in 0.2 secs, such as lens degree, color and supplier. Now, this product from SmartMore is launched in multiple world-wide factories.
In the field of semiconductor, SmartMore is working with several national key enterprises. From Wafer inspection and PCB inspection to chip process analysis, SmartMore published several AI+ solutions and software and hardware integrated equipment. Due to the high misjudgment rate of traditional AOI quality inspection equipment, it often requires manpower to re-inspect the product, which lowers the efficiency of production. With the accumulation of strong algorithm ability, SmartMore's product can quickly analyze, identify and estimate on various defect types. Currently, the accuracy is 99.99%, achieving closed-loop control from equipment process optimization to product quality improvement.
Forming a complete AI intelligent system, SmartMore has launched multiple software and hardware products. The products involve in a variety of aspects, such as SMore ViMo, an industrial AI platform; SMore ViScanner, intelligent code scanners; SMore ViNeo, a smart camera etc. In the future, SmartMore will take a step further into the transformation of traditional manufacture industry to intelligent manufacture industry, create a bright future with its partners.
Rewriting by Kong Xiaomei; Editing by Du Zhixin and Li Yunzhen.
Over the past year, the bull market returned, with technology leading the way.
As I said back in October 2024, the rally that began on September 24 was not merely a rebound, but a reversal. Since then, China's capital markets have undergone a broad revaluation, moving from undervaluation toward fair value.
The Shanghai Composite Index reached its highest level in a decade. The "Yi-Zhong-Tian" trio—Eoptolink, Zhongji Innolight and TFC Communication, three prominent Chinese optical communications stocks—saw their share prices multiply severalfold in a single year. Cambricon's market capitalization briefly exceeded RMB 600 billion. Elsewhere in the technology sector, triple-digit price-to-earnings ratios and valuations exceeding RMB 10 billion became commonplace.
Some investors were greedy; others, fearful. Still others asked me: Are technology stocks in a valuation bubble?
My answer is that what we are witnessing is the hunger and anxiety of an era, reflected in the capital markets. Once you understand this, the current fervor for technology investing is no longer difficult to explain.
Investment has nothing to do with macroeconomics, but everything to do with geopolitics.
China-US relations will shape the investment landscape for decades to come. Geopolitics has played a major role in shaping the hunger and anxiety of our times, fundamentally reshaping the way we invest.
What, then, lies at the heart of China's hunger and anxiety?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is already underway, yet China has not fully overcome the technological shortcomings left by the Third. There is no time to lose.
This is why some people wonder: Why do Chinese computing chip companies command such high valuations when their technologies still lag so far behind NVIDIA's? Why does NVIDIA trade at just 50 times earnings, while a company hailed as "China's answer to NVIDIA" commands a multiple of 300?
To me, this gets the logic exactly backward.
It is precisely because these companies cannot catch up with NVIDIA in the near term that they command a higher strategic premium. The wider the technological gap, the greater the strategic value.
The further something lies beyond our reach, the stronger our hunger. The harder it is to catch up, the deeper our anxiety. If China were to achieve a complete breakthrough in computing chips one day, valuations might actually come down.
Where can one find China's most spectacular natural landscapes?
Much of the answer, I believe, lies in and around the Hengduan Mountains: the Meili Snow Mountains, Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, Mount Gongga, Mount Siguniang, Jiuzhaigou, and many others. Vast differences in elevation and deep fault lines have given rise to landscapes of extraordinary grandeur.
Hard-tech investing follows a similar logic.
Technological gaps, discontinuities in capabilities, and missing links in industrial systems: a leap in difficulty brings a leap in valuation, and a successful breakthrough can, in turn, bring a leap in returns.
This logic extends well beyond computing chips. It is equally evident in memory semiconductors, commercial spaceflight, and other sectors where China still faces substantial technological gaps with other countries.
It was precisely this conviction that led CoStone Capital, starting in 2016, to decisively focus its investments on three areas: hard tech, emerging industries, and life sciences and healthcare. In this context, "hard tech" refers specifically to important industries in which China faces a technological gap with the United States.
Thanks to this forward-looking strategy, CoStone Capital established an early presence across the full value chains of key sectors, including semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
Looking ahead, the frontiers of technological progress and industrial upgrading are boundless. Nor can the gaps in hard technology be closed overnight. The twin windows of opportunity presented by technological innovation and the development of homegrown alternatives to foreign technologies have only just begun to open.
The road ahead is long, but the future holds immense promise.
As an investment firm, CoStone Capital will continue to invest where the hunger and anxiety of each era run deepest, move forward with the tensions that shape our times, and extend our reach toward the most challenging—and most important—frontiers.
Spring 2026