By Greg Gao

Adaps Photonics(灵明光子), a Chinese developer and manufacturer of 3D sensing chips, announced that it secured recently tens of millions of dollars in C-round financing.

Dragon Ball Capital, the VC arm of Chinese local services giant Meituan-Dianping is the lead investor. Kinzon Capital and Gaorong Capital, which previously invested in Adaps Photonics also participated in this round. 

After the financing is completed, Adaps Photonics will accelerate the mass production of products, and continue to invest in research and development to maintain its technological leadership, the company said.

Yue Bin, the founding partner of Gaorong Capital, pointed out that since investing in Adaps Photonics, he observed that the company’s team had built world-class dToF sensor products with a deep understanding of the 3D vision market demand and deep accumulation of dToF technology. Yue expected Adaps to make greater progress in the next mass production and commercialization process.

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Nanshan, Shenzhen, Adaps Photonics focuses on utilizing single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) detector technology to develop photoelectric 3D sensing dToF chips, enabling downstream operators to build 3D modules, Lidars, robots, AR equipment, and other depth-sensing systems used in 3D perception sensing smart hardware. The company has an R&D center in Zhangjiang Industry Park of Shanghai, with a total number of over 80 employees, of which more than 10 have doctoral degrees from first-class international universities.

Adaps Photonics has mastered the SPAD device design and process capabilities. Its single-photon detection efficiency (PDE) of 25% based on a wavelength of 905nm is a world record level, far exceeding the industry average of 5%-18%, which can achieve a longer detection distance, lower power consumption and smaller device size. It also has mature 3D stacked dToF chip design and process capability, and has successfully launched several 3D stacked SPADIS chips, according to the company.