36 Krypton learned that recently the industrial X-ray online inspection solution provider 「X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd」announced the completion of a multi-million RMB angel round of financing, led by former Baidu President Lu Qi founded the Qi Ji Chuang Tan. It is understood that the funds are mainly used for R&D investment.

Founded in January 2021, X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd is an emerging industrial inspection company that is the first in the industry to combine artificial intelligence (AI) with X-ray flaw detection technology to achieve online full inspection of product internal defects.

Zuo Jiaming, founder and CEO of the company, told 36 Krypton that online industrial X-ray inspection is currently a blue ocean market with a market opportunity of more than 10 billion RMB, mainly because the market lacks solutions that can efficiently identify complex defects inside products, and the high-end development of China's manufacturing industry requires more and more products to be fully inspected by X-ray. 

At present, many industrial inspection solutions in the market mainly target external product defects, such as surface scratches and other defects visible to the naked eye. In the view of Liu Hanqi, COO of X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd, surface inspection requires very different hardware designs for different products and massive data to support algorithm development, which is extremely costly to customize, while X-rays can be applied to multiple products due to its penetrating performance, which greatly reduces data requirements.

Therefore, after conducting in-depth market research, the X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd team decided to focus on internal defects. The company has developed an X-ray online full inspection solution, which can achieve efficient full inspection and data precipitation, helping customers to reduce labor and material investment in inspection and significantly improve product delivery quality.

At the same time, X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd is able to provide customized solutions for each customer, which have the potential to scale up due to the lower cost of customization.

The business model of X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd is divided into two main types: one is to provide automatic X-ray inspection solutions and the other is to provide automatic X-ray inspection systems. The company can provide customized X-ray imaging solutions, hardware equipment and automatic inspection algorithms to customers according to their production lines, product forms and defect distribution, helping them to significantly improve product delivery quality at the lowest cost.

In Zuo Jiaming's opinion, the biggest technical advantage of X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd lies in the X-ray imaging industrial software and AI algorithms. The company team has accumulated a large amount of X-ray data experience over the years, and is able to target the development of efficient inspection solutions using algorithms to customize to meet customer needs and achieve rapid delivery.

In fact, behind the algorithm advantage is closely related to the core technology team of X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd. It is understood that the company's AI chief, Zhao Snapti, has a PhD in computer vision from Dalian Polytechnic University and is the inventor of GateNet. He has long been engaged in research in the direction of salient target detection, and his GateNet, a deep learning neural network based on gate control mechanism, has excellent performance in several detection scenarios such as cracks, shadows, transparency and camouflage targets, and is ranked as the world leader.

In addition, the company's founder and CEO Zuo Jiaming has a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California and has experience in machine learning development at Tencent and electromechanical design for robots; the company's CTO has a PhD in computer vision from Dalian Polytechnic University and is engaged in research in the direction of target detection, with full-stack development capabilities and has led the delivery of large national projects to the military and aerospace industries.

In terms of landing, at present, X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd mainly starts from two major fields, namely traditional industry and semiconductor, and serves the head customers of the industry to gradually form a large-scale layout. For example, the solution provided by the company for Company A's flexible circuit board supplier can reduce its labor cost by 80% and the false alarm rate is less than 1%; the company provides automatic inspection equipment for a head auto parts supplier to help it realize fully automatic product inspection.

What is worth mentioning is that X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd has reached strategic cooperation with GE (General Electric) and several domestic first-tier ray manufacturers, which will provide ODM services for the production of equipment for Gong Yuan Sanqian.

When it comes to future planning, Zuo Jiaming believes that after the traditional industrial and semiconductor fields, 3D printing will be a bigger X-ray inspection market in the future, especially with the maturity and mass production of 3D printing production technology, X-ray inspection equipment that can quickly detect internal defects of products will become the industry standard.

At this stage, X3000 Inspection Co., Ltd is in the process of Pre-A round of financing with a target size of 10 million RMB, which will be mainly used to expand the R&D team and carry out large-scale commercialization.