In the past few years, robots have become an important tool to help enterprises resume work, production, and rapid development. Driven by the huge demand for digital transformation in various industries, upstream and downstream enterprises in the robot industry chain have achieved remarkable results in various fields, and the industry has developed rapidly.
In December 2021, the Chinese government, in collaboration with 15 government agencies, released the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Robot Industry", which clarified the significant significance of the robot industry plan and proposed the goals of the robot industry plan, pushing the Chinese robot industry to a new level once again.
And this year is a crucial year for the implementation of the 14th Five Year Plan. Now, with more than half of the 14th Five-Year Plan, what is the development situation of the robot industry?
From the perspective of the financing market, China Robotics Network found that in organizing recent financing events, there has been a significant decrease in financing events since the beginning of this year, and the disclosed amount is also lower than before.
According to incomplete statistics, there were over 300 financing events in the robotics industry in 2022, with over 100 financing events exceeding 100 million yuan and a total financing amount exceeding 30 billion yuan. (Note that the financing mentioned in this article only covers domestic enterprises that specialize in robotics related applications, including services, industry, healthcare, drones, and other fields. The same applies below.)
Among them, the financing market in the robot industry was relatively hot from January to September in the first half of the year, and relatively flat from mid to late year. Investors were more inclined towards the threshold of mid to high-end technology, mainly occurring in the three major fields of industrial robots, medical robots, and service robots. Among them, the industrial robot related field has the highest number of financing events among enterprises, followed by the medical robot field, and then the service robot field.
Despite being limited by external factors such as the epidemic, and against the backdrop of a relatively sluggish overall economic situation, the robot industry still shows relatively strong growth momentum in 2022, with a market size exceeding 100 billion and a financing amount exceeding 30 billion. The repeated outbreaks of the epidemic have given rise to a strong demand for unmanned, automated, intelligent productivity and labor in multiple fields, leading to a healthy trend in the entire robot industry.
Let's turn our attention back to this year. As of June 30th, there have been a total of 63 financing events in the domestic robot industry this year. Among the disclosed financing events, there have been 18 financing events at the level of billion yuan, with a total financing amount of approximately 5-6 billion yuan. Compared to last year, there is a significant decrease.
Specifically, the domestic robot companies that received financing in the first half of this year are mainly distributed in the fields of service robots, medical robots, and industrial robots. In the first half of the year, there was only one financing exceeding 1 billion yuan in the robot race track, which is also the highest single financing amount. The financing party is United Aircraft, with a financing amount of 1.2 billion RMB. Its main business is the research and development of industrial drones.
Why is the robot financing market not as good as before this year?
The fundamental reason is that the global economic recovery is slowing down and the growth of external demand is weak.
The characteristic of 2023 is a slowdown in global economic growth. Recently, the Robotics Work Department of the China Machinery Industry Federation led the mid-term evaluation of the implementation of the "14th Five Year Plan" for the development of the robot industry, and formed an evaluation report based on various opinions.
The evaluation report shows that the complex and ever-changing international situation has brought current uncertainty, economic globalization has encountered a reverse flow, the game between major powers has become increasingly fierce, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in its April 2023 World Economic Outlook that the global economic growth rate in 2023 will decrease to 2.8%, a 0.4 percentage point decrease from the October 2022 forecast; The World Bank released its Global Economic Outlook Report in June 2023, which predicts that global economic growth will decrease from 3.1% in 2022 to 2.1% in 2023. Developed economies are expected to experience a decrease in growth from 2.6% to 0.7%, while emerging markets and developing economies outside of China are expected to experience a decrease in growth from 4.1% to 2.9%. Against the backdrop of weak global economic recovery, the demand for robots in the market has declined, and the development of the robot industry is bound to be constrained and affected to some extent.
In addition, in the first half of this year, the main sales sectors of the robotics industry, such as electronics, new energy vehicles, power batteries, healthcare, etc., experienced a decline in demand, and due to the short-term pressure of downstream prosperity, the growth of the robotics market slowed down.
Although various factors have had a certain impact on the development of the robot industry in the first half of this year, overall, with the joint efforts of all domestic parties, the development of the robot industry has steadily advanced and achieved some results.
Domestic robots are accelerating towards high-end and intelligent industrial robots, expanding their application depth and breadth, and landing scenarios are becoming increasingly diverse. According to MIR data, after the domestic industrial robot market share exceeded 40% in the first quarter of this year and the foreign market share fell below 60% for the first time, the market share of domestic industrial robot enterprises is still rising, reaching 43.7% in the first half of the year.
With the implementation of government leadership and national policies such as "robot+", the logic of domestic substitution has become increasingly clear. Domestic leaders are accelerating to catch up with foreign brands in the domestic market share, and the rise of domestic brands is at the right time.
Post time: Nov-03-2023
