German warehouse equipment provider Kion Group and Saudi Arabian Oil’s Prosperity7 Ventures have jointly led a
Series C+ round of about $100 million in Quicktron Intelligent Technology, a Chinese intelligent warehouse
solutions provider.
Several Chinese financial institutions, including BOCOM International, the financial services arm of Bank of
Communications, and Hong Kong-listed financial and equity investment firm Shenwan Hongyuan Group
participated in the round.
Quicktron’s existing investor China Creation Ventures (CCV) re-upped in the round.
The Quicktron deal is Prosperity7 Ventures’ first direct investment in China, said Aramco Ventures CEO Mahdi Adel,
in a statement released by CCV on Thursday.
The new financing will be used to enhance the firm’s global business layout, improve its technologies and products,
expand the team, and lift production capacity.
Founded in 2014, Quicktron is involved in the R&D, production, sales, and project implementation of AI-based
intelligent warehousing robots and operation solutions. The firm serves clients in the fields of e-commerce, retail,
apparel, pharmaceuticals, and logistics, among others.
Its customers include Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, online discount sales website VIP.com, and Alibaba’s
logistics arm Cainiao.
The Shanghai-based startup has helped Cainiao build an unmanned warehouse equipped with about 1,000
Quicktron’s self-developed portable robots, or the so-called automated guided vehicles (AGVs), in eastern China’s
Wuxi City. It claims that the Cainiao warehouse is Asia’s first intelligent warehouse powered by a thousand robots —
a scale that only Kiva Systems, a robotics firm that Amazon acquired for $775 million in 2021 has achieved.
“In the future, Quicktron’s footprints will expand from the current 15 countries to over 100 countries, and achieve
annual revenue of 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in the next five years,” Yang Wei, founder and CEO of the startup,
said in the statement.
After a nearly ten-fold revenue growth between 2017 and 2019, the firm’s total order volume in 2020 is expected to
more than triple compared to one year earlier. China Securities Journal, a national securities newspaper, reported that
Quicktron may look at an initial public offering (IPO) on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style STAR Market next year.
Quicktron raised nearly 200 million yuan ($30.6 million) in a Series B round from Cainiao and Softbank China
Venture Capital (SBCVC), SoftBank’s China-focused VC arm, in March 2017.
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