In the transition between old and new industries, robots have consistently been a major force shaping the future blueprint of industry.
Over the past few years, robots have become crucial tools for helping businesses resume production and achieve rapid development. Driven by the enormous demand for digital transformation across various industries, companies throughout the robot industry chain have achieved remarkable results in different fields, leading to rapid industry growth.
In December 2021, the Chinese government, together with 15 government departments, released the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robot Industry," clarifying the significant importance of the plan and outlining its goals, propelling China's robot industry to new heights.
This year is a crucial year for the implementation of the "14th Five-Year Plan." Now, halfway through the plan, how is the robot industry developing?
From the perspective of the financing market, China Robotics Network, in compiling recent financing events, found that the number of financing events has decreased significantly this year, and the disclosed amounts are also lower than before.
According to incomplete statistics, there were approximately 300 financing events in the robotics field in 2022, with over 100 events raising more than 100 million yuan, totaling over 30 billion yuan. (Note that the financing mentioned in this article only covers domestic companies focusing on robot-related applications, specifically including service, industrial, medical, and drone sectors, the same applies below.)
The robotics industry financing market was relatively hot from January to September in the first half of the year, and relatively calmer from mid-year to the end. Investors tended to favor mid-to-high-end technology barriers, mainly occurring in the three major areas of industrial robots, medical robots, and service robots. The industrial robot sector saw the most financing events, followed by the medical robot sector, and then the service robot sector.
Despite being constrained by external factors such as the pandemic and against the backdrop of a relatively sluggish overall economic situation, the robotics industry still showed relatively strong growth in 2022, with the market size exceeding 100 billion yuan and the financing amount exceeding 30 billion yuan. The recurring outbreaks of the pandemic have spurred a surge in demand for unmanned, automated, and intelligent productivity and labor across various sectors, resulting in a healthy trend for the entire robotics industry.
Let's turn our attention back to this year. As of June 30th, there were 63 financing events in the domestic robotics industry this year. Among the disclosed financing amounts, 18 were in the hundreds of millions of yuan range, with a total financing amount between approximately 5 and 6 billion yuan. This is a significant decrease compared to last year.
Specifically, the domestic robotics companies that received financing in the first half of this year were mainly concentrated in the service robot, medical robot, and industrial robot sectors. Only one financing deal exceeding 1 billion yuan occurred in the robotics sector in the first half of the year, which was also the highest single financing amount. The financing party was United Aircraft, which raised 1.2 billion yuan; its main business is the research and development of industrial drones.
Why is the robotics financing market not as strong as before this year?
The fundamental reason is the slowdown in global economic recovery and weak external demand.
2023 is characterized by a slowdown in global economic growth. Recently, the Robotics Department of the China Machinery Industry Federation led a mid-term assessment of the implementation of the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robotics Industry," and formed an assessment report based on feedback from various parties.
The assessment report shows that the complex and volatile international situation has brought about current uncertainties, economic globalization is facing headwinds, great power competition is intensifying, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and change.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in its April 2023 World Economic Outlook report, projected global economic growth to slow to 2.8% in 2023, a downward revision of 0.4 percentage points from its October 2022 forecast. The World Bank, in its June 2023 Global Economic Prospects report, projected global economic growth to decline from 3.1% in 2022 to 2.1% in 2023, with advanced economies expected to decline from 2.6% to 0.7%, and emerging market and developing economies (excluding China) expected to decline from 4.1% to 2.9%. Against the backdrop of a sluggish global economic recovery, the demand for robots has weakened, inevitably constraining and impacting the development of the robot industry.
Furthermore, in the first half of this year, demand in key robot-selling sectors such as electronics, new energy vehicles, power batteries, and medical devices weakened, putting short-term pressure on the robot market due to downstream economic conditions, leading to a slowdown in growth.
Although various factors impacted the development of the robotics industry in the first half of this year, overall, thanks to the joint efforts of all parties in China, the industry has progressed steadily and achieved some results.
Domestically produced robots are accelerating their advancement towards high-end and intelligent industrial robots, with applications expanding in depth and breadth, and increasingly diverse application scenarios. According to MIR data, after the domestic market share of industrial robots exceeded 40% in the first quarter of this year, while the market share of foreign companies fell below 60% for the first time, the market share of domestic industrial robot companies continued to climb, reaching 43.7% in the first half of the year.
With government leadership and the implementation of national policies such as "Robotics+", the logic of domestic substitution is becoming increasingly clear. Leading domestic companies are rapidly catching up with foreign brands in the domestic market share, and the rise of domestic products is timely.
