Strategic Investment in Leanplans Completed Through Strong Alliance Between Hashen Capital and Leaguer Innovation
Leanplans is China’s first tech-innovation enterprise dedicated to AI-driven design and manufacturing of industrial components. |
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Introductory
Recently, a new university-affiliated rising star has emerged in the industrial AI sector—Shenzhen Lepulance Technology Co., Ltd. (brand name: Leanplans) has announced the completion of a joint strategic investment from Hashen Capital and Leaguer Innovation.
Hashen Capital serves as the asset management platform of Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen (HIT Shenzhen), while Leaguer Innovation is a technology service and industrial incubation platform nurtured by the Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School. Leanplans’ unique value lies in its dual advantage: inheriting HIT’s deep-rooted technical expertise in vertical large models, and integrating Leaguer Innovation’s extensive experience in industrializing high-end manufacturing scenarios. This joint investment in Leanplans signals a potential shift in China’s industrial AI landscape—from isolated breakthroughs to ecosystem-level collaboration.
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A “Top-Tier” Industry-Academia-Research Alliance:
HIT’s Technical DNA + Leaguer Innovation’s Industrial Resources
Founded in 2023, Leanplans brings together a powerhouse team from the industrial internet sector, AI research groups at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), and seasoned experts from the manufacturing industry. The team is highly interdisciplinary, with deep domain expertise, hands-on know-how, and a proven track record across industrial internet, artificial intelligence, and manufacturing. Their strong engineering execution capability sets them apart.
The company’s Chief Scientist, Professor Qi Shuhan, is a leading figure in the field of multimodal large models at HIT, recognized for his cutting-edge research and leadership in industrial AI.
Professor Qi Shuhan, Chief Scientist at Leanplans and Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology
The company maintains a close collaboration with the Computer Research Center of Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) and the Guangdong Key Laboratory of Secure and Intelligent Technologies, jointly advancing the development and refinement of industrial vertical large models. Following this round of strategic investment, Leanplans has further strengthened its industrialization capabilities—leveraging Leaguer Innovation’s rich industry-academia-research resources accumulated in high-end equipment manufacturing and industrial internet sectors to provide real-world application “testbeds” and ecosystem support for technology deployment.
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Technical Breakdown: How Do Industrial Vertical Large Models Penetrate the Entire Manufacturing Value Chain?
Leanplans’ core product revolves around a “single foundation + multiple scenarios” framework:
Technical Foundation
Built on the MoE (Mixture of Experts) vertical large model “Jiutouniao” developed by Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), this foundation integrates multimodal industrial data—including engineering drawings, materials science, manufacturing knowledge, industrial protocols, and supply chain data—equipping it with outstanding cognitive capabilities specific to the manufacturing vertical.
Scenario Applications AI+Design
Through multimodal interaction, customer requirements are automatically converted into 3D models, followed by real-time simulation testing—such as stress analysis and intelligent material selection.
基于工程知识、设备数据、图纸和材料特性等，动态调整参数组合，优化设计和编排最优工艺路线；
Based on engineering knowledge, equipment data, drawings, and material properties, parameters are dynamically adjusted to optimize design and orchestrate the most efficient process routes.
According to internal testing and evaluation, a client in the automotive parts sector reduced their new product development cycle from 45 days to 17 days after using Leanplans’ design module. Additionally, the AI-recommended topology optimization方案 led to an 18% reduction in material cost per part.
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Addressing Industry Pain Points: Flexible Manufacturing Requires a “Digital Brain”
China’s manufacturing sector is facing three major challenges: a sharp increase in small-batch, customized non-standard orders; growing supply chain uncertainties; and rigidly rising labor costs. Traditional industrial software, relying on fixed rules and manual expertise, struggles to deliver rapid responsiveness.
Leanplans’ solution fundamentally builds an industrial “neural hub” — leveraging large models’ ability to understand unstructured data such as drawings and process documents, combined with real-time production line data, to dynamically generate decision-making recommendations. This approach aligns closely with Germany’s Industry 4.0 concept of “flexible manufacturing,” but follows a lighter technical path: enterprises can access AI capabilities via API calls without modifying their production lines, reducing initial investment costs by over 60%.
Industry data forecasts that from 2025 to 2035, China’s artificial intelligence industry scale is expected to grow from RMB 398.5 billion to RMB 1.7295 trillion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%. On the policy front, the “14th Five-Year Plan” for state-owned and central enterprises prioritizes AI development, aiming to cultivate more leading technology companies, focus on key sectors and critical application scenarios, drive breakthroughs in large models, and actively participate in building an open ecosystem. Leanplans’ entry into the market coincides with this crucial window of industrial transformation.
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Benchmark Case: From “Machine Replacement” to “AI-Optimized Supply Chain”
At a precision components company in Jiangsu, Leanplans completed a full-chain, multi-scenario transformation validation:
Design Stage
Based on the client’s vague requirements (e.g., “reduce weight by 10% without compromising load-bearing capacity”), Leanplans generated over 10 alternative solutions and recommended the optimal option, facilitating rapid decision-making and validation.
Procurement Stage
Using the AI Quotation Agent, multiple batches of 2D and 3D drawings are processed simultaneously, handling over 3,000 drawings per month on average, significantly improving quotation and pricing efficiency.
Supply Chain Stage
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From a Capital Perspective: Hard Technology Investment Returns to Industry Essence
The head of Hashen Assets pointed out, “The commercialization of academic achievements requires bridging the gap between the laboratory and the market. The Leanplans team possesses a rare and irreplaceable dual expertise—they understand AI algorithms deeply while also having hands-on experience addressing manufacturing bottlenecks on the shop floor.”
Leaguer Innovation values Leanplans’ AI application implementation and ecosystem integration potential: “Through Leanplans’ platform, we aim to connect the research institute’s technologies in robotics, digital twins, and other fields with manufacturing scenarios, creating a ‘technology puzzle’ for industrial intelligence.”
With the launch of DeepSeek, AI has entered its application era beyond general-purpose large models, and the commercialization prospects for B2B applications are particularly clear. As the world’s factory, China is seeing growing attention from global capital markets toward industrial AI, with multiple domestic AI-driven industrial enterprises securing funding in the hundreds of millions RMB range. Leanplans’ focus on industrial parts manufacturing—the backbone of the manufacturing sector—combined with its academic resource advantages and clear scenario focus, positions it for significant market potential and growth opportunities.
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Strategic Outlook: From “Tool Empowerment” to “Ecosystem Co-creation”
Leanplans’ product roadmap closely aligns with the practical demands of parts manufacturing, leveraging AI technology to enable the entire chain from design to production. Its core offerings include AI-driven quoting, 3D modeling, sketch optimization, DFM evaluation, intelligent Q&A, and defect detection. These solutions cover the key business scenarios in parts manufacturing, helping enterprises make faster decisions, improve efficiency, and meet the current needs for flexible production and agile manufacturing.
For example, Leanplans’ AI-driven quoting system can generate accurate real-time quotations based on parts’ materials and processing methods, significantly reducing the time required by traditional quoting processes. During the design phase, its 3D modeling and sketch optimization features help designers quickly create and refine parts models, enhancing both design efficiency and quality. In the production stage, DFM evaluation and automated production scheduling effectively guide the manufacturing process, minimizing errors and boosting productivity.
Leanplans’ founder and CEO, Tan Chengming, revealed that the new round of funding will primarily be allocated to three areas: partnering with Harbin Institute of Technology to build an open industrial vertical large-model platform that attracts developers to co-create the ecosystem; expanding into high-end manufacturing sectors such as aerospace, new energy, and robotics; and broadening and integrating high-quality production capacity while upgrading supply chain service capabilities. The overall strategy goes beyond isolated technological breakthroughs, aiming to become the “infrastructure” of industrial intelligence.
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Conclusion
The wave of artificial intelligence has surged from general-purpose large models to vertical-specific large models and application layers, intersecting with the manufacturing industry’s major transformation from “scale-driven” to “intelligent and agile.”
Parts manufacturing is the foundation of all industrial production. Leanplans aims to leverage the synergy of top academic expertise and industrial capital to develop proprietary vertical large models and build multi-agent systems, driving intelligent automation across the entire process—from design modeling and evaluation to quoting and production. This effort contributes to reshaping the industrial manufacturing landscape.
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