Intech Robotics Secures Tens of Millions in Angel Funding, Launches Breakthrough Domestic Automated Solid Reagent Dispensing System

Recently, Zhengcong Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zhengcong Technology” or “Intech Robotics”) announced the completion of its angel financing round amounting to tens of millions of yuan, with Furong Capital serving as the sole investor. The funds will continue to be used for new product research and development, team building, and market expansion both domestically and internationally.

Zhengcong Technology was established in 2020. Leveraging the founding team’s profound expertise in R&D and product development, and through in-depth analysis of laboratory automation needs, the company specializes in developing and manufacturing automated instruments and flexible automation products for the life sciences sector. It provides customers in this field with more standardized, precise, and efficient enhancement solutions. Its products have already gained recognition and secured orders from numerous leading clients in the life sciences industry.

After more than two years of positive R&D, Intech Robotics has officially launched its fully automated solid dosage weighing and dispensing instrument, becoming the first intelligent manufacturing team in China to break the international monopoly in the niche field of laboratory automation through entirely independent R&D and achieve large-scale mass production. The Intech Robotics fully automated dispensing instrument can accurately weigh and dispense over 100 different types of solid medications with varying physical properties within one hour. It requires no equipment cleaning when switching between medications, offers a weighing range from 1 milligram to 200 grams, and achieves a precision as high as 0.1 milligrams.

The launch of this domestically produced instrument has broken the complete monopoly held by two Swiss companies (METTLER TOLEDO and CHEMSPEED) over the automated weighing and dispensing of solid pharmaceuticals, achieving an innovative breakthrough in a critical bottleneck technology for China’s laboratory automation advancement.

As is well known, the automated weighing and dispensing of solid reagents is one of the most core and fundamental steps in all experimental work. As the saying goes, “pipetting liquids is easy, but dispensing solids is difficult.” The reason this field is technologically monopolized by a few foreign companies is that solid reagents are far more diverse and complex in physical form than liquids (e.g., powders, granules, fats, snowflake-like structures, etc.). They are also prone to compression, adhesion, adsorption, and moisture absorption. Furthermore, loss during the dispensing process cannot be measured in real time, making precise weighing and automated dispensing extremely challenging. In actual laboratory practice, there is a substantial volume of such repetitive basic tasks. Consequently, the step of solid reagent weighing and dispensing has become a bottleneck in the R&D process and remains one of the key scenarios that many life science institutions hope to address through automation.

In the past, in order to achieve system-level automation as quickly as possible, Chinese enterprises and research institutions either imported fully automated modules for simple system integration and assembly to realize so-called “localization,” or directly imported expensive turnkey integrated solutions from abroad. This approach left them constantly vulnerable to the risk of technological blockades and failed to address the root causes of the problem. Faced with foreign technological restrictions, exorbitant consumable costs for dispensing heads (often thousands of yuan per unit), lead times exceeding six months, and equipment prices ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of yuan, many enterprises and research teams have been forced to assign senior R&D personnel to spend substantial time on basic, repetitive tasks such as reagent weighing and dispensing in an effort to cut costs. This not only slows down R&D and production efficiency but also prevents the implementation of fully automated, standardized operations at the core feeding stage. Without access to high-quality, affordable domestically produced feeding instruments, we will be unable to conduct large-scale, high-throughput fully automated experiments, causing our development in fields such as life sciences to permanently lag behind and remain dependent on foreign technologies.

Shifting from a passive to an active technological stance, we have insisted on full independent control over core product technologies, thereby truly achieving the domestic production of solid dosage weighing and dispensing instruments.Zhuo Li, Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Zhengcong Technology, stated: “Our fully automated solid dosage weighing and dispensing instrument does not rely on the assembly of imported modules. Through years of forward-looking R&D and continuous technological iteration, we have broken through technical barriers by creatively employing mechanical methods such as vibration, stirring, electromagnetic forces, electrostatics, and airflow disturbance, combined with AI-powered machine vision. This approach has enabled us to surpass the patent coverage of hundreds of patents held by foreign companies on their existing technology platforms, while demonstrating superior performance in practical applications. Specifically, at a minimum weighing precision of 0.1 mg, Zhengcong Technology’s dispensing instrument can complete the dispensing process within 20–30 seconds (compared to approximately 60 seconds for imported products), offers a broader application range (1–2000 g vs. 1–200 g), achieves sample switching via a 1-second plug-and-play action, and incurs consumable costs significantly lower than those of comparable imported products.”

Considering cost-effectiveness, this instrument surpasses the two imported products that currently dominate the field in virtually all technical parameters. This new fully automated liquid handling system is being delivered in batches to several leading enterprises in the life sciences sector. Leveraging its technological expertise developed from creating a fully automated solid dosage weighing and dispensing system, Zhengcong Technology will initiate strategic collaborations with industry leaders in life sciences. Together, they will explore additional application scenarios requiring high-throughput full automation support, aiming to establish a new paradigm for fully automated, high-throughput R&D in China’s life sciences industry.

In addition to standardized instruments and equipment, flexible automation robotic products and comprehensive solutions designed and manufactured by Intech Robotics have been successfully delivered to multiple clients in the life sciences sector. By leveraging mobile composite robots as a medium, the system connects all existing expensive instruments without replacement, bridging them from an automation perspective to achieve the integration of sample flow, control flow, and data flow. This transforms traditional laboratories into fully unmanned, automated facilities. The company has become the first to deploy and operate a flexible automation robotic system within leading enterprises in the life sciences industry. With this automated system capable of independently completing hundreds of experiments 24/7—including experimental operations, data collection, and analysis—laboratories can reduce staffing requirements by 3–5 operators, significantly enhancing R&D efficiency while improving experimental standardization.

Leveraging its founding team’s extensive expertise in precision mechanical design, dynamic machine vision, multi-robot coordinated control, kinematics, and product commercialization, Zhengcong Technology is developing a product portfolio centered on automated precision instruments, mobile composite robot platforms, and high-throughput mechanical equipment. By identifying common needs among customers and within the laboratory automation industry, the company transforms these requirements into standardized products for mass production, thereby achieving genuine forward-looking R&D and technology transfer. This effort contributes to China’s goal of surpassing foreign competitors in laboratory automation, particularly in the field of life sciences.

Dr. Wu Junwei, Founder and CEO of Zhengcong TechnologyStatement: Zhengcong Technology’s vision is to help humanity conduct experiments faster and better. At the same time, we aim to position ourselves as practitioners of domestic substitution and even domestic surpassing, continuously focusing on and deeply cultivating hard-tech areas of national priority such as biomedicine, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Our persistent commitment to independent R&D stems from our recognition of the bottlenecks associated with the past rapid adoption of foreign technologies. We are determined to firmly master core technologies independently and bring key technologies to a world-leading level. Zhengcong Technology hopes to work together with peers across all sectors to make unremitting efforts to upgrade “Made in China” to “Made by China” and “Designed by China.”

Dr. Sun Pengjun, Chairman of Furong InvestmentStatement: As life sciences R&D ventures into increasingly complex territory, greater emphasis is being placed on the quality of early-stage and original basic research. Inefficiencies in laboratory and production operations have become increasingly prominent, particularly in high-throughput, repetitive experimental tasks that are still often performed by highly educated, high-caliber personnel. Furong Capital has been seeking an automation enterprise that is not merely a system integrator or custom service provider, but one with robust product development capabilities to address real-world pain points. Therefore, our choice is Zhengcong Technology. We wish Zhengcong Technology rapid progress as it strives to become a full-stack automation solutions provider in the life sciences sector.

About Zhengcong Technology: Helping Humans Conduct Experiments Faster and Better 

About  Intech  Robotics:  Assisting  Human  to  Conduct  Experiments  of  High-Efficacy