Machine Vision Firm KST Secures Nearly 400M Yuan in C-Round Financing

Guangdong KST Optical Co., Ltd., an optical equipment manufacturer, announced on Wednesday that it has completed round-C financing amounting to nearly 400 million yuan ($59.3 million). The leading investors were China Fortune-Tech Capital, Minsheng Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd., and Aplus Capital, while co-investors were Fang Xinrui Capital and Share Capital. Winsoul Capital acted as the exclusive financial consultant for this round.

This is the second round of financing completed by KST in the past year. On June 30, 2021, KST completed round-B financing of 75 million yuan with Shenzhen Huihe Assets as its leading investor. The recently acquired funds are to be used mainly for large-scale production, R&D investment and market development of anti-welding DI digital lithography machines, semiconductor DI digital lithography machines and photovoltaic cell lithography systems.

Founded in June 2011, KST focuses on machine vision of light sources and light source control systems. Its products are applied in visual positioning, measurement and appearance inspection of high-end intelligent equipment within various fields.

In the field of machine vision, KST has served more than 1,500 enterprises including Hikvision, Daheng Technology, Han’s Laser Technology Industry Group, Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., Suzhou Maxwell Technologies Co., Ltd., AAC Technologies, Guangdong Lyric Robot Automation Co., Ltd., Bozhon Precision Industry Technology Co. Ltd., Truking Technology Limited, and more. It is one of the leaders of machine vision light sources and control systems in China.

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Since 2015, the R&D team of KST has applied light source technology to the PCB field, and has developed a near-ultraviolet LED exposure machine – a leader in the Chinese market. It is engaged in developing China’s alternative products of high-end exposure equipment.

Dr. Wang Hua, the founder of KST, said, “We will keep developing the underlying lithography technology and expand its application to other high potential segments. By early 2021, we studied lithography systems for semiconductors and photovoltaic cells in depth, and completed prototype development with mass production capability. Besides, our upstream semiconductor packaging supporting precision heat dissipation components and chip packaging base have also been put into production in small batches.”