The digital twin field has enormous development potential, and both domestic and foreign companies have entered the market to build digital governance and application capabilities.
Beijing Freedo Technology Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 北京飞渡科技股份有限公司), a digital twin company, recently completed a Series B funding round of CNY tens of millions, with investment from Qinling Technology Investment.
This round of funding will be used for the construction of a digital twin PaaS platform and accompanying toolchain, including core technology research and development such as CIM and AIGC, as well as market expansion and team building.
Established in 2016, Freedo Technology aims to build a domestic digital twin PaaS platform and a series of supporting toolchains based on data engines, rendering engines, and AI engines. It utilizes next-generation 3D space and 3D engine technologies to provide digital infrastructure for industries such as smart cities, smart parks, and smart water conservancy.
The company's main products include the DTS digital twin PaaS platform, the Taiji developer platform, the CIM foundation platform, and the AIGC engine. The DTS digital twin PaaS platform is the company's core product, providing a complete solution from raw data to final application presentation.
The digital twin field, where Freedo Technology operates, is one of the rapidly developing segments in the enterprise services domain. Market research firm MarketsandMarkets predicts that the digital twin market will reach USD 26.54 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of 33.4%. Numerous companies, both domestic and international, have entered the market.
In the U.S. market, NVIDIA launched the Omniverse platform in 2021, positioning it as an "engineer's metaverse" primarily used in virtual factories, virtual design, virtual product optimization, and virtual manufacturing. Microsoft has previously introduced an industrial metaverse solution that combines digital twins, automation control, industrial AI, and industrial vision technologies.
In the domestic market, digital twin companies can be classified into three categories: the first category focuses on technologies such as spatial data fusion, lightweighting, rendering, real-time data integration, and simulation scene integration; the second category focuses on data collection, data visualization, GIS, etc.; and the third category consists of solution providers offering customized solutions and implementation services, including cloud vendors like Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud, as well as system integrators like Pactera.
On the commercial side, Freedo has already collaborated with over 100 central state-owned enterprises and listed companies, such as Shanghai Surveying and Mapping Institute, Beijing Surveying and Mapping Institute, China Energy Engineering, and China Construction. Their products have a coverage rate of 78% in new first-tier cities and have been implemented in over 40 cities, spanning more than 100 industries, including cities, transportation, parks, energy, and engineering. They have over 100,000 platform developers and more than 200,000 platform users. As for the team, Freedo currently has nearly 300 members, with research and development personnel accounting for nearly 70%. The executive team consists of professionals from top domestic and international institutions like Tsinghua University, with years of practical experience in the digitalization field.
Freedo's Chairman, He Wenwu, explained the three pain points faced by the implementation of digital twins: "Firstly, data complexity, involving various business links that are difficult to connect; secondly, after data fusion, the resulting data is massive, making it challenging for servers to handle and compute; thirdly, the digital world struggles to truly replicate the physical world, resulting in poor effects and experiences. Therefore, from the beginning, we aimed to address these three pain points and continuously iterate on technology and products, focusing on data engines, rendering engines, and AIGC engines as core directions."
Regarding future plans, Freedo will continue to research and innovate technological products, fully exploit the value of 3D data through their core product, the DTS digital twin PaaS platform, and AIGC engine, significantly lowering the threshold for digital twin adoption. Additionally, the company will continue to invest in the AIGC engine to explore its application in traditional data production processes and 3D modeling, aiming to further reduce data production costs and improve efficiency.
Shi Ying, the Head of Qinling Venture Capital's Business Execution Department, indicated that Freedo is the first company in which Qinling Venture Capital has invested as part of its layout in next-generation information technology, aligning with the group's strategic focus on new tracks. Furthermore, Freedo's advanced DTS digital twin PaaS platform provides end-to-end services, from spatial data governance to complete presentation solutions, addressing the pain points of integrating and rendering diverse and heterogeneous data faced by traditional industries. It can effectively empower digital applications in the traditional energy and chemical materials sectors. They highly value Freedo's excellent data governance capabilities and pioneering practical experience.