Remarkable Youth: Venture Capital Record | Gu Weigang from rtunit: Independently Developed "Magic Tool" to Support National Technological Advancement

Real-time digital controller is a digital computing controller based on model design, with code automatic generation capabilities. It can be widely used in the automotive industry, intelligent manufacturing, industrial automation, high-quality electric drive systems, power system automation, smart grids, and power electronics. Dr. Gu Weigang's team from Southeast University, after ten years of technical accumulation and three years of hard research and development, launched the first fully independently developed real-time digital controller RTU-BOX204 in 2018, breaking the long-standing monopoly of imported products in the domestic market.

　　The seeds of entrepreneurship are sown in youth.

"In middle school, I read the autobiographies of entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft), which left a deep impression on me, and I decided to create a career through my knowledge in the future," said Gu Weigang.

After graduating with a master's degree from Southeast University in 2007, Gu Weigang first chose to work at a listed company in Nanjing that focused on power automation. This period allowed him to understand some basic knowledge about company operations.

In 2008, when BBS forums were quite popular, Gu Weigang combined his expertise and established the first domestic DSP (real-time digital signal processor) technology exchange forum—HELLODSP—in his spare time, bringing together engineers engaged in related technologies in China, allowing them to easily exchange technical ideas through the platform. After careful management and significant effort, the HELLODSP forum quickly became vibrant and successful, becoming the most well-known online platform in the domestic DSP industry.

Due to the website's fame, a chip company in Shanghai saw the potential of the forum and wanted to turn it into a platform for internet chip sales, so they invited Gu Weigang to Shanghai for development discussions. After careful consideration, Gu Weigang resigned from his current job and joined the chip company. However, after a few months, the company's development philosophy was vastly different from Gu Weigang's dedication to technological research and development. Therefore, Gu Weigang decided to return to Nanjing and founded Nanjing Fourier Electronics Technology Co., Ltd. in the same year.

The entrepreneurial environment in 2008 was vastly different from now; there was very little venture capital and no entrepreneurial support policies. Fourier Electronics faced a long period of lack of funds and talent, encountering many setbacks and difficulties. During that time, Gu Weigang often felt a bit lost. This dormant period saw the company's development relatively slow.

When discussing his feelings and experiences in entrepreneurship, Gu Weigang said: "First, spend money wisely; second, truly believe that what you are doing is very meaningful, so you can overcome difficulties and persist; third, keep a long-term perspective, look beyond immediate benefits, as many 'bottleneck' technologies require long-term accumulation. I believe this has a certain impact on team cohesion and the long-term development direction of the company."

A turning point occurred in 2015-2016 when a university professor from Hangzhou, who had returned from the United States, purchased a circuit board from the company for a controller. After an in-depth conversation with him, Gu Weigang suddenly gained inspiration and realized that he actually possessed the technology to develop a real-time digital controller with code automatic generation capabilities. With this new perspective, he decided to reorganize the team, gathered capable software and hardware developers, and refreshed the brand. "rtunit" was thus born, meaning "real-time control unit." He then registered the trademark and in 2016 re-registered the company as Nanjing Ruitu Youte Information Technology Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as "Ruitu Youte"). Ruitu Youte is a transliteration of "rtunit."

　　Independent innovation replaces imported products.

In October 2018, Ruitu Youte welcomed its first real customer since its establishment, a young professor from Southeast University who had returned from Denmark. Due to insufficient foreign equipment resources during his research, he was unable to use them and initially planned to purchase expansion boards from overseas but was "looked down upon" due to the small order size. Although imported products had certain technical advantages, their supply and maintenance cycles were very long, prices extremely high, and after-sales service inadequate.

After being introduced, the professor visited Ruitu Youte and was pleasantly surprised to find that the self-developed controller RTU-BOX204 could meet his needs, and he placed an order on the spot. The professor's team continuously achieved fruitful results in research using Ruitu Youte's products and provided the following evaluation: "The RTU-BOX controller has stable and reliable hardware functions, simple and flexible software operation, and can completely compete with imported products, with excellent service and high cost performance." Thus, the market for Ruitu Youte's real-time digital controllers gradually opened up. With user feedback and suggestions, combined with actual user needs, Ruitu Youte's products became increasingly refined, and some innovative features were introduced, paving a unique path of research and innovation. After years of immersion in the industry, Gu Weigang realized that although the road ahead was slow and arduous, it was all about accumulation and sedimentation.

In 2019, the project "Real-time Digital Control System Based on Model Design and Code Refactoring" submitted by Gu Weigang's team won the Excellent Entrepreneurship Project for Young College Students in Nanjing. After winning the award, they received 500,000 yuan in angel investment and funding from the Nanjing Innovation Investment Group and the Nanjing Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. "The investment from the Nanjing Innovation Investment Group is an affirmation of our previous work. With such backing, the team greatly increased its confidence. Additionally, it taught us how to raise funds, how to design a reasonable equity structure, and how to establish a partnership system, which elevated the company's management to a new level," Gu Weigang stated.

With continuous personal effort and capital support, rtunit has now become a professional manufacturer focused on "zero-code" industrial-grade control and research and development platforms. It is dedicated to developing power electronic devices and control R&D platforms related to the automotive industry & intelligent driving, industrial automation & intelligent manufacturing, high-quality electric drive systems, and power system automation & smart grids, and also provides various customized design needs.

"For example, this controller originally sold for 45,000 yuan each, and this year it has risen to 99,800 yuan each," said Gu Weigang. The price increase is due to changes in the company's sales model, and the brand effect of Ruitu Youte is gradually becoming prominent. Currently, Ruitu Youte's products are not much different from imported products in terms of hardware, while there is still a certain gap in software. After the price increase, the profit margin has improved, allowing for more resources to bridge the software gap.

　　To create better digital controllers.

How to make controllers more user-friendly? To simplify development, Gu Weigang's team works towards this goal every day. The flagship product of rtunit—the real-time digital controller series (RTU-BOX)—is a powerful tool for research and development, independently developed with complete intellectual property rights. RTU-BOX consists of industrial software aimed at model development and advanced complex hardware circuits. Users can program using graphical models through the self-designed industrial EDA software Rtunit Studio, making it as easy as building blocks for children to implement complex control algorithms, and these programs can run stably on the accompanying hardware controllers.

A simple development process can not only save developers a lot of time but also improve the accuracy of experimental results. To address different usage scenarios, rtunit has developed multiple RTU-BOX options for customers to choose from, ranging from education to research and development, from rapid prototyping to commercial products, and from research institutions to industrial enterprises; RTU-BOX can easily handle all of these. Due to the high flexibility of real-time digital controller software and hardware, more and more universities, research institutions, and enterprises are choosing rtunit.

"Our mission is to make research and development in the field of electromechanical systems and power electronics in China simple. I hope the company can become a respected name in the field of general digital controllers: technologically advanced, with a high brand reputation, and become the preferred brand for users." When talking about the future, Gu Weigang has a firm and clear goal.