Author | Lin Qingqing
Editor | Yuan Silai
Hard Krypton learned that the high-power chip electronic ceramic heat dissipation packaging solution provider "Pepper Gray Technology" has recently completed two consecutive rounds of financing. The financing is invested by top production and investment resources, government funds, listed companies and other investors, with a financing amount of nearly 150 million yuan. The financing funds will be used for product research and development and production line expansion.
Founded in 2021, "Pepper Gray Technology" is committed to solving the "three highs" problem of chip packaging (high heat, high voltage, high frequency) in electronic ceramic products. The existing heat dissipation substrate material system includes aluminum nitride, silicon carbide, and diamond. Pepper Gray Technology adopts the IDM mode, and currently the industrial laser heat sink has achieved independent and domestic production throughout the entire process from design, research and development to production. The product has been verified by downstream top customers through mass production. The Shenzhen factory is the largest production line for ceramic heat dissipation packaging bases in China, with a monthly production capacity of up to 5 million pieces this year. The Songshan Lake factory has successfully established a COS packaging laboratory and introduced AOI testing capabilities.
Heat sink is the key to achieving heat dissipation in high-power devices such as industrial lasers. The heat sink is bonded and packaged with the laser chip to dissipate the heat generated during the device's operation, thereby ensuring its efficiency and stability. Meanwhile, the different materials of the heat sink substrate also affect its heat dissipation capability. Currently, aluminum nitride ceramics are the mainstream materials for laser heat sink substrates.
The Chinese laser industry has grown rapidly in recent years, driving the growth of upstream industries. According to the 2022 China Laser Industry Development Report, the revenue scale of China's laser equipment market is expected to be 82 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 18.5% compared to 2020; One of the important components, fiber laser, has a market size of 9.42 billion yuan, accounting for approximately 43.7% of the global market share.
Based on the founding team's years of experience in the laser industry, "Pepper Gray Technology" has noticed the lack of domestic laser heat sinks: Japanese companies represented by Kyocera and Maruwa occupy the vast majority of the domestic laser heat sink market share. Meanwhile, the import of heat sinks has to some extent constrained the development of domestic lasers due to factors such as production capacity and price.
At first, we helped a supplier achieve domestic substitution of chips, completely replacing imported chips downstream. Then, we also wanted to find a supplier that could support the localization of heat sinks, but it took two years without success. We believed that the status and capabilities of practitioners could not meet our requirements. Based on the trend of localization and a series of client demands for higher performance, cost, and delivery flexibility, we decided to do this ourselves, "said An Yi, founder of" Pepper Gray Technology ".
In this regard, "Pepper Gray Technology" regards industrial laser heat sink as the first field to enter, focusing on solving the problems of mass production technology and other issues that existed in domestic heat sinks before.
From a technical perspective, "Pepper Gray Technology" has established its own patent roadmap and layout by analyzing existing relevant patents and key products worldwide; From a technical perspective, "Pepper Gray Technology" integrates industry technologies such as chips and PCBs to address the technical challenges of ceramic metallization and electroplating in heat sink production.
As of now, "Pepper Gray Technology" has achieved nationwide mass production of heat sinks, including materials and key equipment; We have multiple core technology patents, including ceramic pretreatment, PVD thin film process, and fine electroplating.
Pepper Gray Technology currently has a total of 15 products, with the mass-produced product being a 45W laser chip heat dissipation packaging base. The monthly production capacity has reached 3 million pieces, and it will reach 5 million pieces this year. The heat dissipation solution for laser chips above 45W has been verified by the client and has the ability to be converted to mass production.
Regarding the implementation of cost reduction and efficiency improvement, An Yi stated that "full process self-made production ensures our requirements for product performance and quality consistency, and the product yield can reach 95%. In the past few years, the automation and intelligence level of domestic equipment has actually exceeded that of our Japanese friends. Therefore, we have chosen to use domestic materials and equipment in the production process. On the basis of this high automation, high efficiency has also helped us achieve cost advantages." After the mass production scale is further expanded, the cost advantage of "Pepper Gray Technology" heat sink products will also be further highlighted, and the expected selling price is 50% or even lower than imported heat sinks.
In addition, "Pepper Gray Technology" has launched a silicon carbide material system heat sink product and delivered it to customers for testing and verification. Compared to the existing mainstream material aluminum nitride, silicon carbide has a higher theoretical thermal conductivity, which helps to improve the power and energy density of laser chips and expand laser application scenarios. At the same time, the thermal conductivity, thermal expansion coefficient and other properties of silicon carbide materials further test the design, production process and understanding of customer needs of manufacturers.
In addition to industrial lasers, the future product line plan of "Pepper Gray Technology" includes heat dissipation solutions in the fields of optical communication, consumer electronics, and IGBT, focusing on heat dissipation problems in high heat, high voltage, and high-frequency scenarios.
In the future, An Yi believes that there is a great potential for development in the industrial laser industry. The most widely used laser cutting market in China currently has an equipment scale of about 100 billion yuan. However, since the first half of this year, with the rapid decline in laser prices, we have seen a welding market that is equivalent to 10 times the size of the laser cutting market. I believe we may have just entered the 1.0 era of industrial lasers. In the future, "Pepper Gray Technology" will also focus on the larger market of electronic ceramics. How to move from a billion dollar market to a billion dollar market, and even go global, is the key issue we will consider in the future.”
In terms of the team, the team members of "Pepper Gray Technology" come from Europe, Japan, Taiwan, China, China, etc. They have introduced engineers from the first echelon enterprises in the semiconducting/IC carrier plate/PCB/automation industry in ceramic pretreatment, PVD film process, fine electroplating, high-precision grinding and polishing, photolithography and etching, packaging and testing, as well as AOI automatic optical detection. The founder of the company, An Yi, graduated from Dalian University of Technology and has work experience in leading companies such as IBM, DJI, Xinwangda, and Chuangxin Laser.
Investor perspective:
Rice Venture Capital: High power chip cooling solutions have long been monopolized by foreign companies. As the trend of chips increasing to higher power accelerates, the demand for high-efficiency cooling components is bound to further increase, and domestic substitution is imperative. The PGT team targets this precise market, relying on the founding team's years of industry experience, rich enterprise management experience, strong execution ability, and keen business acumen to quickly introduce self-developed products into the market, and has gained recognition from core customers, becoming a dark horse in this field and standing out. We believe that Pepper Gray Technology will further iterate its products in the future and continue to create value for customers. We firmly believe that Pepper Gray Technology will become a leading company in this field.
Shenzhen Angel Mother Fund: PGT's current business is a typical "difficult and worthwhile thing to do". With resilience, the team has mastered the complete production process of laser heat sink from front-end to back-end in less than 3 years, breaking through the problem of domestic localization of the entire laser heat sink process, continuously solving the long-term dependence on imports in China, promoting the iterative development of domestic laser chips, and even enhancing the competitiveness of the entire industry chain. In the future, with the steady development of Pepper Gray Technology in segmented industries, it will realize the application of technology in other scenarios, and continue to have a positive outlook on the company's future development. At the same time, DeepAngel also hopes to further support the company's development through its post investment management capabilities.
Hengtong Investment: Pepper Gray Technology is currently the most competitive company in China for high-power chip heat dissipation product solutions. Through technological innovation, it has ultimately achieved comprehensive localization. At present, the heat dissipation requirements for high-power chips in markets such as energy, AI computing power, aerospace, and automotive are rapidly upgrading, and the iteration speed of product updates is gradually accelerating. The impact of heat dissipation on reliability is crucial. China needs a company that is completely independent and controllable, providing comprehensive and synchronized systematic services from product design, research and development to product manufacturing and supply. Hengtong expressed its recognition and support for the PGT entrepreneurial team and their achievements through two consecutive rounds of investment, and will continue to empower them in all aspects as always.
