Shukun Technology Files for IPO After Securing RMB 200 Million in New Funding Round, Expanding AI Medical Boundaries from Cardiovascular to Whole-Body Solutions

On August 31, 2020, SHUKUN announced the completion of a RMB 200 million financing round. The round was led by Qiming Venture Partners, with participation from ThunderSoft, Longma Peak Venture Capital, and SPDB Silicon Valley Bank. The proceeds will be used to rapidly advance SHUKUN’s comprehensive coverage of the AI medical imaging market and accelerate the maturation and commercialization of more globally leading AI healthcare products.

Notably, only two months have passed since SHUKUN’s previous RMB 200 million financing round. In 2020, a year marked by increasing capital caution, SHUKUN’s ability to rapidly secure a total of RMB 400 million in such a short timeframe has set a new record for global medical imaging AI financing this year. This achievement underscores SHUKUN’s formidable strengths in AI technology and commercial promotion—strengths that are difficult for competitors to match—and highlights investors’ strong confidence in the commercial prospects of SHUKUN’s AI-enabled healthcare solutions.

According to data from the Artery Orange database, as of August 24, 2020, there were a total of 130 financing events in the global medical AI sector. Among these, there were 19 investment events related to imaging AI—10 overseas and 9 in China—with a total amount of RMB 1.56 billion. SHUKUN alone raised more than one-quarter of the total global financing for imaging AI this year.

Investors’ affirmation is well-founded. Mr. Zhao Hongfei, Chairman of ThunderSoft, stated, “AI+Healthcare is one of the most exciting and anticipated industrial directions in the intelligent era. SHUKUN’s relentless pursuit of technological excellence has significantly improved diagnostic efficiency for both physicians and patients. We believe that AI-driven healthcare will increasingly provide technology-enabled medical services to the general public, and SHUKUN, as a leading AI healthcare product company, will continue to lead industry development. ThunderSoft will collaborate with SHUKUN to promote the integration of AI and the healthcare industry, striving to benefit humanity in this great era of intelligence.”

Zhang Ao, Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners, stated, “Qiming Venture Partners has long focused on digital healthcare, particularly medical artificial intelligence (AI), which is playing an increasingly important role in enhancing the capabilities of healthcare systems, reducing medical costs, and helping physicians improve diagnostic and treatment efficiency and quality. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical AI pioneers represented by SHUKUN responded swiftly and made outstanding contributions to the fight against the epidemic. SHUKUN is a mature startup with the characteristics of an industry leader. We believe that SHUKUN will realize its vision of the ‘Digital Human,’ benefiting people in China and around the world.”

In addition, SHUKUN boasts a top-tier team of medical and engineering experts, exceptional innovative thinking, and robust R&D capabilities. By rapidly addressing the urgent needs of physicians worldwide with its globally leading AI products, the company has established itself as an industry leader and continues to attract significant investor interest.

This year, the Chinese government has introduced a new infrastructure policy. AI-enabled healthcare, which benefits the nation, medical professionals, and the public alike, is a key component of this new infrastructure. The state is poised to allocate more resources to drive the technological upgrading of the healthcare sector.

SHUKUN leverages artificial intelligence to empower healthcare, with its products targeting heart disease, stroke, and cancer all facilitating the rapid implementation of China’s new smart healthcare infrastructure.

In December 2018, SHUKUN launched the world’s first AI-assisted diagnostic product for coronary heart disease, benefiting 290 million cardiovascular patients in China and addressing a global market encompassing billions of individuals with cardiovascular conditions.

Subsequently, SHUKUN launched its “Digital Heart” product family, which includes structured reporting for coronary CTA imaging, the functional assessment product CT-FFR, a pericoronary fat attenuation index (FAI) assessment system, intelligent reporting for calcium scoring, surgical planning for aortic dissection, virtual stenting, and postoperative evaluation, thereby achieving full-pathway intelligence in cardiovascular diagnosis and treatment. Among the top 30 hospitals on Fudan University’s cardiovascular hospital ranking, 29 have established clinical collaborations with SHUKUN in the cardiovascular field. Nationwide, more than 300 hospitals use SHUKUN’s “Digital Heart” products with high adherence on a daily basis. SHUKUN has also partnered with hospitals to jointly undertake more than 20 scientific research projects funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, local science and technology commissions, and the National Natural Science Foundation. In November 2019, SHUKUN’s products received approval from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) as innovative medical devices, becoming the first cardiac AI-based medical imaging auxiliary diagnosis and treatment product to enter the green approval channel for Class III AI medical devices.

In July 2020, SHUKUN launched the world’s first “Digital Brain” product suite. Stroke is one of the leading causes of death among Chinese residents, with at least one in every five deaths attributable to stroke. China has become the country with the highest lifetime risk of stroke and the heaviest disease burden. The “Digital Brain” covers all scenarios within stroke imaging units, enabling precise lesion localization and providing comprehensive imaging-assisted diagnosis for hemorrhage, ischemia, aneurysms, and CTP-related parameters. It exponentially reduces emergency response time, offering an efficient tool for the treatment of stroke patients. Currently, the “Digital Brain” products have undergone clinical validation in more than 100 hospitals across China.

In the field of lung cancer, which has the highest incidence rate among all cancers, SHUKUN’s AI-powered pulmonary nodule product has carved out a differentiated path by adhering to its consistent philosophy of originality and product differentiation. Leveraging its strengths in cardiac imaging, SHUKUN’s “Digital Chest” solution not only comprehensively detects pulmonary nodules from a single chest CT scan but also provides assessments of cardiac function, non-gated calcium scoring on low-dose CT (LDCT) images, and evaluation of lung function in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This approach achieves comprehensive intelligent auxiliary diagnosis for chest imaging, integrating both structural and functional analyses.

Mr. Xiao Jiancong, Founding Partner of Longma Peak Venture Capital, stated: “SHUKUN has entered the AI medical imaging sector for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases—a market characterized by its large scale, high growth, and high barriers to entry. The company’s core technologies are globally leading, its team is industry-leading, and it demonstrates sharp focus and exceptional execution. Within just a few years of establishment, SHUKUN has rapidly developed products addressing critical clinical needs in response to real-world demands and forged partnerships with hundreds of top-tier hospitals. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company demonstrated a strong sense of social responsibility. We believe that SHUKUN will empower society through technology and drive higher-quality healthcare services in China.”

Ao Yuxiang, Executive Director and General Manager of the Corporate Client Division at SPD Silicon Valley Bank, stated, “In recent years, AI applications in the healthcare sector have been highly active in the global market. We have observed that SHUKUN distinguishes itself from most startups in this niche by focusing on the cardiovascular and cerebrovascular fields, which present higher technical barriers, and has rapidly achieved remarkable progress in medical device registration and commercialization. We sincerely wish SHUKUN continued success in its journey of technological innovation, maintaining its leading position while truly benefiting patients, empowering physicians, and significantly enhancing the efficiency of medical imaging diagnosis.”

Deep vertical integration has cemented SHUKUN’s position as an industry leader, while horizontal expansion has turned its visionary blueprint into reality.

With the deregulation of procurement for Class III medical devices, an increasing number of healthcare institutions have become eligible to purchase more advanced medical equipment. Hospital procurement of CT systems has risen significantly, and the market size of the CT examination industry is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.2%. SHUKUN AI effectively empowers modalities such as CT and MRI, enhancing operational efficiency in tertiary hospitals and improving diagnostic quality in secondary hospitals, thereby demonstrating clear market growth trends.

AI applications based on computer vision are not limited to the radiology department. By integrating multiple technologies, AI can penetrate into various scenarios such as the information technology department and clinical departments, comprehensively reshaping diagnosis, treatment, and health management processes—including monitoring, prevention, consultation, treatment, medication, and rehabilitation—through intelligent solutions.

The development of medical AI has been included as a key category in China’s “New Infrastructure” initiative, making the establishment of a proactive public health prevention and control system an urgent priority. Through collaboration with the National Health Commission, SHUKUN’s “AI + Cloud” solution has been deployed to serve grassroots healthcare institutions, leveraging cloud computing to amplify the data analytics capabilities of artificial intelligence. Covering COVID-19 as well as the three diseases with the highest regional incidence—heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer—SHUKUN’s “AI + Cloud” platform enables precise early screening, assesses disease severity, facilitates intelligent patient triage, and optimizes clinical decision-making. In the clinical domain, SHUKUN is assisting physicians with surgical planning and real-time lesion comparison, providing clinicians with rich, detailed information to support their decisions.

The expansion of the addressable market is undoubtedly one of the key reasons why SHUKUN has secured financing. With the influx of new capital, SHUKUN will continue to deepen its expertise in cardiac AI, while broadly exploring departmental needs to identify new growth drivers for AI.

With the deep accumulation of tens of thousands of cases daily, rapid coverage of numerous districts and counties each month, and intelligent services for millions of patients annually, SHUKUN is continuously expanding overseas, emerging as the brightest rising star in the global medical AI landscape today.