Tangxi Secures Tens of Millions in Pre-A Funding to Promote Low-Sugar Lifestyles with AI-Powered Beverage Analysis

Sima Huapeng, founder of Tangxi, revealed that the company completed a pre-A financing round worth tens of millions of yuan in the first half of last year, with Hangzhou Good Hope Capital as the investor. The Tangxi app uses artificial intelligence technology to analyze the sugar content of beverages commonly consumed by users, thereby fostering low-sugar dietary habits.

Amid the growing public emphasis on health, we have come to recognize the harms of excessive alcohol consumption. Recently, cardiologists have begun urging people to limit their intake of sugary drinks just as they do alcohol, as the dangers of excessive consumption of sugary beverages now surpass those of alcohol.

Among the widely prevalent conditions of hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and hyperglycemia in the current population, sugar is the primary inducing factor and a major culprit behind adolescent obesity; therefore, controlling sugar intake warrants our attention.

Previously, type 2 diabetes primarily onset after the age of 50 and was considered one of various age-related diseases. However, there is now a significant rise in incidence among young people. Due to irregular sleep patterns and dietary habits, as well as a preference for strong flavors, young individuals often consume large quantities of sugar-sweetened beverages when eating Sichuan cuisine or hot pot. These behaviors are detrimental to health and can easily predispose individuals to diabetes. Furthermore, beverages on the market are becoming increasingly sweet to attract customers, posing a potential risk to young people who frequently consume them.

Tangxi is an AI-powered mobile application that leverages deep learning technology to analyze imaging data from millions of beverages. It can identify over 1,000 popular sugar-sweetened drinks available on the market, enabling consumers to scan a beverage with the app and instantly learn its sugar content as well as the duration of exercise required to offset its caloric intake. This helps users patiently cultivate low-sugar dietary habits. Currently, Tangxi can analyze more than 2,000 common items and over 1,000 commonly available sugar-sweetened beverages, with this database being continuously updated.

The scan results are not merely a single numerical value; instead, they inform users of the sugar content in each beverage consumed and the amount of exercise required to burn off that sugar, thereby helping users avoid the health risks associated with excessive sugar intake from unhealthy dietary habits.

Excessive sugar consumption can lead to fatty liver, increased appetite, headaches, elevated vascular pressure, fatigue, diabetes, and heart disease. However, the vast majority of people lack awareness of these risks. Knowing the sugar content in advance and taking preventive measures can help maintain good health.

In the realm of prevention, Miao Health, previously reported by VCBeat, collects data from smart wearable devices and leverages core algorithms refined by professional medical and health teams both domestically and internationally. By combining this with personalized data analysis based on individual user differences, it provides health behavior management solutions to its users. These companies all aim to eliminate diseases before they manifest.

What sets Tangxi apart is that it helps users cultivate healthy habits and awareness right from the purchase stage.

The development team behind Tangxi is Nanjing Bituoshi Network Technology Co., Ltd., a company dedicated to the research and development of AI technologies, algorithms, and products in the field of computer vision. The core members of the Bituoshi team and its board of directors possess extensive entrepreneurial and management experience in the overseas security sector.

In addition to Tangxi, the company’s product portfolio includes Toolwiz Photos, an AI-powered photo management application driven by a deep learning engine. It can identify highly similar or blurry images and categorize photos based on their content. The company has also developed Toolwiz FaceSwap, an app featuring face recognition and 3D reconstruction capabilities, which has amassed tens of millions of users overseas, primarily in the United States. Bitoshi’s products also offer offline versions that enable emotion recognition, face recognition, age estimation, and facial accessory detection without an internet connection. Furthermore, the company has developed Guide Dog, an object-recognition-based navigation app for the visually impaired. Leveraging AI technology, it allows blind users to perform real-time, offline recognition of nearly 5,000 common objects and over 1,000 types of food using their smartphones.

Regarding future development, Sima Huapeng stated that the primary focus will be on improving recognition rates through technological optimization; secondly, healthy beverage recommendations will be provided to users.