13 billion! Tsinghua PhD couple creates the "First Hong Kong Stock Full-Stack Intelligent On-Exchange Logistics Robot"

“Hong Kong’s first all-in-one intelligent on-site logistics robot stock” is here. On March 24, Kailsun Technology officially listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. During trading, it surged by more than 109% at one point, reaching a high of HKD 34.98 per share, and ultimately closed up 84.27%. Its market capitalization exceeded HKD 13 billion.

What’s especially noteworthy is that this company, which did not bring in cornerstone investors, recorded a public offering subscription of 2,153.26 times in excess of the offer size. A total of 107,000 investors rushed to buy, involving funding of more than HKD 163.4 billion. The international offering also achieved 3.37 times oversubscription, and global long-term funds such as BlackRock and Millennium have entered the fray.

Behind this capital feast is a startup legend of a couple of Tsinghua PhDs who have been building in the field for 12 years. From high-paying partners at McKinsey to leaders in the logistics robot sector, Mr. Gu Chun Guang and Ms. Yang Yan have used technology to break industry pain points and link products to global markets. In a race with nearly 400 companies, they have run out a pace of acceleration for China’s intelligent manufacturing.

The real-business path of an academic achiever couple

The birth of Kailsun is rooted in a career choice described as “deviating from convention.” In 1989, Gu Chun Guang was admitted to Tsinghua University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1993, he went far to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to pursue a doctorate, focusing on robotics and automation. Before completing his studies and returning to China, he worked at i2 Technologies, an American supply chain management software company. In 2005, he was dispatched back to Beijing to develop the market. He then joined McKinsey’s Shanghai office as a senior consultant, providing strategic consulting to Fortune 500 companies.

At that time, Gu Chun Guang was a high-salary executive who stayed in five-star hotels and flew business class. But Yang Yan understood that he always felt consulting was too far from real industry, and that he wanted to do something practical.

Image source: internet

Yang Yan also comes from Tsinghua. She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in the United States. She has worked at well-known companies such as Aware in the US and Infineon China. Their shared academic background and pursuit of real business made the two the best partners in their career.

In 2008, Gu Chun Guang decided to resign and join the private enterprise Jiuzhoutong Pharmaceutical Group as Chief Technology Officer. “Private companies are stricter in cost control, but joining Jiuzhoutong was his first step toward realizing his dream of doing real business,” Yang Yan later recalled. This nine-year industrial training became a key foundation for Kailsun’s success.

Right after joining, Gu Chun Guang faced industry challenges related to the relocation of new and old warehouses in Beijing. By convention, business operations needed to be paused for a week, causing losses of at least 70 million yuan. He led the team to independently develop a pharmaceutical moving software that enabled shipments to continue as they moved. Only a little over 20,000 yuan worth of medicines were lost in the process. This industry “miracle” helped him establish himself at Jiuzhoutong, and also sharpened his keen insight into the core pain point of traditional logistics—its high dependence on manual labor and low efficiency.

In 2012, Amazon acquired the robot company Kiva, sparking a global wave of logistics-robot entrepreneurship. Gu Chun Guang realized that in the labor-intensive large-scale logistics industry, it was an inevitable trend to replace labor with machines.

In 2014, which was dubbed “the first year of China’s logistics mobile robots,” Gu Chun Guang and Yang Yan officially founded Kailsun in Wuxi. They focused their core efforts on independent R&D of four-way tote box shuttle-car robots (MSR). Gu Chun Guang led the development of the software and hardware, while Yang Yan handled strategy and industry cooperation. The couple teamed up to kick off their entrepreneurial journey.

In the early stages of entrepreneurship, tackling the technical challenges was full of difficulties. In order to bring the product up to international standards, Gu Chun Guang personally led a testing team to conduct more than 1 million runs of the shuttle vehicles. By analyzing wear on components, they continuously optimized the design. Practice proved the saying “hard work pays off.” In 2015, Kailsun’s first-generation four-way tote box shuttle-car robot entered mass production. It became the first tote box four-way shuttle product in China and instantly broke foreign technological monopolies.

At the end of 2016, Kailsun became acquainted with SF Holding. At that time, SF was facing a predicament of rapidly increasing warehousing pressure. Kailsun’s four-way shuttle technology could raise warehouse space utilization from 30%-40% to above 70%, and reduce labor costs by 40%. This core advantage drove in-depth cooperation between the two. SF not only became a customer, but also took an equity stake through its fund, becoming Kailsun’s largest external institutional shareholder. Its complex warehousing scenarios also became a testing ground for Kailsun’s technology iterations.

In 2017, Kailsun completed two major key layouts: it obtained a unique Series B investment of RMB 67.5 million from Wuyuefeng Capital, and it acquired a pharmaceutical logistics automation enterprise under Jiuzhoutong Pharmaceutical. In 2019, following SF, it implemented a project in Russia—specifically the postal sortation and distribution center in Novosibirsk—marking the first time it opened up the global market. That same year, its Moscow branch was established. In 2025, it released the globally original VFR series ultra-narrow aisle forklift robots, narrowing aisle width to 1650mm and increasing storage density by 30%, further reaching a new peak in technological strength.

From a Series A financing of RMB 22 million in 2014, to a Series E financing with valuation reaching 3.5 billion yuan in 2022, and then to listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2026, Kailsun’s growth trajectory has always been inseparable from the support of the “Tsinghua lineage.” Founders of investors such as Datay Capital and Wuyuefeng Capital are mostly Tsinghua alumni. The predecessor of MaLi Venture Capital was also Tsinghua Science Park’s venture investment arm, which became an important driving force for the company’s development.

Breakthrough with full-stack technology

From financial data, Kailsun shows a good momentum of high growth and loss reduction. In 2024, the company’s revenue reached RMB 721 million, up 30.8% year-on-year. In the first nine months of 2025, revenue was RMB 552 million, up sharply by 60.3% year-on-year, with growth outpacing the industry. At the same time, losses continued to narrow: in 2024, adjusted net loss was RMB 46.4 million, and in the first nine months of 2025 it dropped to RMB 13.38 million. More importantly, as of November 30, 2025, Kailsun had about RMB 2.3 billion in outstanding orders to be delivered in the next three years, which will become the core support for turning losses into profits.

Image source: Kailsun IPO prospectus

Technology-driven and scene-driven is Kailsun’s core competitiveness. As one of the few companies globally that masters full-stack robot technology, Kailsun has built a complete product matrix covering three major scenarios: storage and retrieval, handling, and sorting. This includes four-way shuttle cars (MSR), autonomous mobile robots (AMR), conveyor sorting robots (CSR), as well as full-stack software systems including WMS/WCS/RCS—forming an uncopyable technological moat.

Among them, the four-way shuttle car is Kailsun’s flagship product. Compared with traditional horizontal warehouses, this technology can increase warehouse space utilization by more than 50%, reduce energy consumption by 30%, and in peak e-commerce promotional scenarios, when paired with AMR robots and conveyor sorting systems, it can process 2,000+ orders per hour—far exceeding the efficiency of traditional manual warehouses that typically handle 200-300 orders per hour.

The VFR series “Erlang Shen” CS robots launched in 2025 are equipped with a 3D vision recognition system featuring dual 3D cameras + laser radar. The fork lifting height can reach up to 4700mm, further strengthening the advantages in the sub-segment track.

Technology investment is the backbone of innovation. From 2022 to 2024, Kailsun’s R&D investment exceeded RMB 240 million. As of September 2025, it has accumulated 153 domestic patents and 11 foreign patents. It also participated in drafting 6 national standards and industry standards. Its PTR-CC series narrow-aisle high-lift intelligent handling robot has been recognized as China’s first (set) equipment in 2024.

Ongoing R&D investment has allowed Kailsun to stand out in sub-segments: based on the 2024 shipment volume of VNA AMR, its market share is 19.3%, ranking first in China. Based on 2024 revenue, it ranks fifth among domestic comprehensive intelligent on-site logistics solution providers, with a market share of 1.6%.

In terms of business expansion, Kailsun has charted a path from deep vertical cultivation to diversified expansion. Initially, it relied on Jiuzhoutong’s resources to focus on the pharmaceutical industry. It then gradually moved into areas such as e-commerce, apparel, and automotive. Today, it has successfully entered higher-barrier sectors such as new energy and semiconductors. In the new energy sector, Kailsun provides intelligent manufacturing solutions for CATL and BYD. To meet safety needs in lithium battery production, it has developed fireproof stackers equipped with automatic fire-extinguishing functions. In the semiconductor sector, Kailsun launched a semiconductor automated material handling system (AMHS), addressing the “bottleneck” problem in China’s semiconductor production logistics.

Optimization of the customer structure confirms the improvement in market recognition. By the end of 2024, Kailsun had completed 1,530 landed projects, serving 779 customers, covering 28 sub-sectors. Core customers include SF Holding, CATL, BYD, Bosideng, and other leading enterprises. From January to September 2025, newly added revenue from the catering industry was RMB 42.64 million, accounting for 7.7%. The revenue share of the top five customers dropped from 48.0% in 2022 to 27.4%, significantly reducing customer-dependence risk.

The company’s global expansion has also been effective. After starting with its Russia project in 2019, Kailsun has carried out business in 16 countries and regions worldwide. It has established branches in Moscow and Hamburg, and set up an R&D center in Austria, achieving “dual localization in R&D and markets.” In 2022, it cooperated with the top three global logistics system integrators to build a luxury goods logistics center for Dubai’s BFL Group, successfully entering the high-end overseas market. In Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and other regions where global smart logistics robots are seeing the fastest growth, Kailsun made early moves and captured new blue-ocean opportunities with an annual compound growth rate of more than 23%.

New opportunities in the RMB 413.7 billion track

Kailsun’s listing is not only a milestone in the company’s development, but also reflects a golden period for China’s intelligent on-site logistics robot industry.

According to data from Frost & Sullivan, the market size of China’s intelligent on-site logistics robots is expected to reach RMB 413.7 billion by 2030. From 2025 to 2030, the compound annual growth rate will remain above 15%. The industry is set to benefit from both scale expansion and technological upgrades.

Policy tailwinds also help drive the industry’s development. The Chinese government has issued policies such as the “‘Robot+’ Application Action Implementation Plan” and the “14th Five-Year Plan for Modern Logistics Development,” promoting the construction of intelligent logistics systems and the deployment of unmanned factories. This provides a favorable environment for the industry. Real needs such as rising labor costs, scarce land resources, and increasing operational complexity also make “machine replacement” an inevitable choice for the logistics industry. Intelligent on-site logistics solution providers can improve operational efficiency by 30%-50% and reduce labor costs by 40%-60%. Market penetration is expected to rise from 17.7% in 2024 to 25.0% in 2030.

In addition, going overseas has become a key variable in industry competition. Although overseas markets offer broad space, only a handful of domestic companies have the capability to go global with system integration. Most companies can only serve as supporting suppliers for international giants. With its cooperation experience with SF, local deployment, and a high-end partnership strategy, Kailsun has already secured a first-mover advantage in overseas markets. However, how to deal with differences in technical standards and market demand across different regions remains a long-term challenge.

For Kailsun, IPO fundraising injects strong momentum into its subsequent development. This fundraising totals HKD 613 million. Of this, 45% will be used for R&D, 25% for capacity expansion, 20% for overseas and domestic market expansion, and 10% as working capital. With ample funding support, the company will further strengthen its technology barriers, improve delivery capability, and expand its global influence.

The curtain on industry consolidation has already been raised. As leading companies cluster for listings, the Matthew effect will intensify. Companies with core technology, scenario coverage capabilities, and global layout will further widen the gap, while less competitive small and medium-sized enterprises may be eliminated. With this Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO, as the first “full-stack” company in this track, Kailsun’s key task will be how to balance expansion with profitability, consolidate its technological advantages, and deepen its global layout—this will be crucial to realizing its vision of becoming a world-class enterprise.

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