Shuye Technology (术也科技)

A design-led Hangzhou maker of smart electronic pipettes, now pitching itself as "Physical AI for self-driving labs".

1. Core Product / Service

Hangzhou Shuye Technology Co., Ltd. (brand vecverse, founded Feb 2018) sells small lab instruments built around one product: the @Pette smart electronic pipette.

• @Pette Mini: single-channel, 0.5–1000 µL across models, 99 g, touch screen, voice assistant ("set volume to 299.9"), multi-dispense and reverse pipetting, auto-calibration at power-on, and cloud logging of each operation.
• @Pette Pro: touch-screen pipette in single- and multi-channel versions.
• Accessories: the Pette Hub charging/data hub, the @Lab digital prep kit (light-guided well targeting for pooling workflows), the @Micro² portable 96-well plate reader, and the Meinverse online molecular-biology tool platform.
• Prices: not published; distributors quote on request.

The August 2026 Pre-A announcement adds a four-layer roadmap on top of this:

• a modular "Lego-style" workstation that carries smart pipettes plus magnetic, incubation, detection and purification modules, claimed to cover 10+ workflows (PCR, ELISA, NGS and MS sample prep);
• VLA Operon, a vision-language-action multi-agent cluster that schedules devices over a local network using a publish-assign-commit consensus protocol;
• a self-driving-lab layer;
• "Shuxin-1" (术芯一号), an edge-AI module that legacy instrument makers could plug into their devices.

As of Oct 2026 none of these roadmap items has a product page on the company site. A "Pette Bot" pipetting robot was shown at a Dubai trade fair in 2025.

2. Target Users & Pain Points

• Users: mainly university and institute labs. The company names CAS, Westlake, Zhejiang University, Fudan and Peking University Third Hospital, and claims "nearly 100" or "100+" partner institutions; the two figures conflict. Smaller groups are clinical and third-party testing labs. Ecosystem partners include Dian Diagnostics, Biosan (博圣) and two other diagnostics firms.
• Pain points addressed: hand fatigue and inconsistency in high-frequency manual pipetting, such as high CVs in multi-round ELISA plating; no record of who pipetted what; and imported electronic pipettes costing far more than local alternatives.
• Go-to-market: distributors on 14 business lines; the first exclusive provincial distributor was signed in Dec 2024. Overseas, the company launched at ARABLAB Dubai in 2025 and reportedly exhibited at SLAS 2026, but no named overseas customers have been disclosed.

3. Competitive Landscape

4. Unique Observations

• This is a pipette company with an AI-lab pitch. The only products that demonstrably ship are pipettes and small accessories. The workstation, VLA Operon and Shuxin-1 layers have no public specifications, customers or papers. Using VLA (embodied-robot foundation models) to coordinate pipettes reads as fundraising vocabulary from 2025–26, not as demonstrated technology.
• The design pedigree is real but the claims are inflated. Red Dot's own database lists a 2022 Design Concept "Best of the Best" for the "vecbot" smart pipette concept, with the founder as design lead. Company copy turns this into "the @Pette series won Red Dot Best of the Best", which blurs a concept award into a product award. The "world's first AI voice pipette" claim conflicts with INTEGRA's 2022 launch.
• Its strategic anchor is a diagnostics group. Dian Diagnostics' fund (Wanyuandian, registered as Hangzhou Yiyuan VC, ≈5.9%) and director Xu Min (≈5.8%, also a partner in that fund) together hold ≈11.7% of the company. That gives a credible route into clinical and third-party labs, and also signals that the realistic near-term market is diagnostic-lab bench tools rather than autonomous discovery labs.
• Slow capital formation: Pre-A came eight years after founding and raised only tens of millions of RMB. A pipette business can survive on that; a self-driving-lab business cannot.

5. Financials / Funding

• Revenue, orders, unit sales: not disclosed.
• Earlier rounds: no public announcements. Corporate-registry shareholders include Rendao Qixing (≈8.6%) and Xu Min (≈5.8%), who are possibly early backers, plus a likely ESOP vehicle (≈7.8%).
• Pre-A · Aug 2026 · "tens of millions of RMB" (amount not disclosed) · lead: Taipu Life Science Investment (≈7.8% via a Wenzhou fund); follow-on: Wanyuandian Fund (Dian Diagnostics' industry fund). Registered capital rose from ≈RMB 10.0M to RMB 11.59M, which matches the 13.7% held by the two new investors.
• Valuation: not disclosed. If the round raised RMB 20–50M, the implied post-money value is roughly RMB 150–360M (inferred, not reported).

6. People & Relationships

• Li Su (李谡): founder, CEO and chair, holding ≈64%. The company describes his background as "doctoral research" at TU Munich in engineering realization and engineering robotics; it does not state that he completed the degree. He was formerly an HCI lecturer at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, which explains the company's Weimar product studio, and he led the Red Dot concept design.
• Wang Yixian (王艺娴): co-founder, CMO and director; formerly assistant to the chairman of a large industrial group.
• Xie Chutian (谢楚天): co-founder and director; holds two master's degrees from Boston University and formerly ran overseas business at an unnamed domestic lab-equipment maker.
• Xu Ningyang (徐宁阳): chief product officer.
• Investors: Taipu Life Science Investment; Wanyuandian, the Dian Diagnostics fund.
• Other contacts: Azenta's APAC sales leadership visited in Sept 2024; there are academic ties with CUHK and Tsinghua Shenzhen.
• Peers: benyao-tech, xuanren-tech, megarobo, jindu-biotech, hetan-ai.