"I still shudder at the thought of what might have happened if we hadn't persevered. We wouldn't have the confidence to face uncertainties today," Huang added, describing last year's fundraising as a "leap of faith."

Huang recalled that the fundraising due diligence was at a critical juncture just before Shanghai's lockdown. The due diligence lead was trapped in the lockdown area and couldn't leave.

"I insisted that they mobilize their colleagues outside the lockdown area to join the due diligence process, and we all worked overtime together at Enjoy Move Tech's office to catch up on the progress," Huang said. "If we had hesitated and missed this opportunity, it would have delayed us by three to four months, impacting our company's development pace. The consequences would have been unimaginable."

Due to uncontrollable factors, the automotive industry faced a gloomy outlook in the first half of 2022. From 2019 to July 2023, the passenger car market experienced significant fluctuations and declines, particularly in March and April 2022. Compared to the same period in 2023, April 2022 saw a 4% year-on-year decline, with a shortfall of 1.4 million vehicles. Amidst the bleak automotive market, Enjoy Move Tech's ability to secure capital investment is a testament to its strength.

"There's an element of luck," Huang added, "but I think perseverance and persistence are also very important." In an exclusive interview with Yiou Auto, Huang repeatedly mentioned Enjoy Move Tech's "long-term commitment."

Founded in 2018, Enjoy Move Tech positions itself as a "bridge connecting chips and the implementation of autonomous driving technology." For five years, Enjoy Move Tech has focused on high-performance computing software platforms for intelligent vehicles, with intelligent driving application-level operating systems and embedded artificial intelligence as its core technologies, helping automakers and automotive parts companies realize the implementation of ADAS and autonomous driving technology.

To date, Enjoy Move Tech has received four rounds of financing, with a total amount of nearly 300 million yuan. Huang modestly attributed the company's ability to attract capital to its accurate positioning in the middleware track.

With the increasing application of electronic and electrical products in vehicles, the number of ECUs (Electronic Control Units) per vehicle has soared. Distributed electronic and electrical architectures can no longer adapt to the further development of vehicle intelligence, and the transition to centralized electronic and electrical architectures, along with domain controllers and software layer decoupling, has followed. As vehicle complexity increases, middleware has emerged.

Middleware is located between system software and application software, responsible for communication between various application software modules and scheduling system resources. Zhang Jianwei, from Continental's China Software and Systems Development Center, likens middleware to "the lubricant and adhesive in the automotive E/E architecture."

"Five years ago, we sensed the necessity of middleware products and conducted extensive research and development, and we have persisted until now," Huang explained. "It is precisely because our products have a position and value in the entire industry that we have been able to attract capital."

Huang described Enjoy Move Tech as a "pioneer." Five years ago, middleware was little known, and Enjoy Move Tech pioneered its way through the thorns from scratch. This could not have been achieved without Huang and his core team's more than 20 years of practical experience and deep insights into the automotive supply chain industry.

First, the automotive industry has a long development cycle. Compared to the short development cycle of consumer electronics such as mobile phones, automotive products require two to three years to be certified. Automotive product suppliers need to have sufficient patience and long-term vision. Huang believes that if software products become too short-sighted, they easily fall into the trap of software services.

Second, middleware belongs to the system layer and is not as easily perceived by customers as upper-layer algorithms. For Huang and his team, the challenge was to persuade customers to accept this emerging and intangible thing.

Currently, Enjoy Move Tech has become one of the few global manufacturers that can provide cross-domain (multi-domain fusion) high-performance computing software platforms. It has accumulated mass production-level technology on hardware platforms such as NXP S32G, TI TDA4, Horizon J3, J5, and Qualcomm 8155, with partners including automakers such as Li Auto, Hozon New Energy, SAIC, and Great Wall, as well as suppliers such as SenseTime, Horizon Robotics, and Continental.

Having passed the validation phase from 0 to 1, Enjoy Move Tech is now moving towards rapid development from 1 to 10. Huang introduced to Yiou Auto the company's current focus.

The first is to go overseas. "From the beginning, Enjoy Move Tech aimed for the global market, and we have done a lot of internal work in the past five years," Huang introduced. "In the next five years, we will launch a global strategy and gradually enter the entire Japanese and European markets."

Huang mentioned that Enjoy Move Tech has done a lot of preparatory work in terms of software process systems, third-party product certification, and knowledge systems for overseas markets in the past, and will continue to maintain the current R&D speed, scale, and application market, while combining the requirements of foreign markets for product maturity to go global.

Second, when the company's scale system, market reputation, and brand awareness reach a certain level, Enjoy Move Tech hopes to become a public company. "The expectations of the China Securities Regulatory Commission for hard-tech companies are not that they can go public through several rounds of financing, but that they are expected to be a long-lasting enterprise," Huang mentioned. "What Enjoy Move Tech needs to do is to ensure that its business model meets the needs of the industry and ultimately achieves scale. And this ultimately returns to the essence of business, that is, it has sustainable profitability."

"Globally, the software companies that stand out are those with durability and longevity," Huang concluded. "This has always been our persistence."

In 1997, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holding Group, decided to start making cars and made the bold statement: "What's so great about making cars? It's just four wheels, two sofas, and an iron shell."

More than 30 years later, cars have transformed from simple "means of transportation" to "mobile intelligent terminals," bidding farewell to traditional mechanical drives and racing towards software-driven, no longer the simple "four wheels plus two sofas" of the past.

Yiou Think Tank mentioned in the "2022 China Intelligent Electric Vehicle Basic Software Research Report" that with the rapid growth of automotive software code, it is expected that by 2025, the amount of automotive software code will reach 500 million lines. By 2030, software will account for 35% of automakers' revenue, and the Chinese automotive software market will reach 3.5 trillion yuan.

The changing nature of automotive products is simultaneously transforming the automotive supply chain. "I believe that the automotive supply chain is undergoing a huge transformation and restructuring. On the one hand, software suppliers are seizing new development opportunities. On the other hand, traditional suppliers are also transforming. Moreover, the boundaries of the various roles in the automotive supply chain are beginning to blur," Huang Ying mentioned. "Not long ago, Volkswagen and Xiaopeng Motors started to cooperate. In the past, it was unimaginable for two OEMs to cooperate."

Huang Ying believes that all players in the current automotive supply chain want to expand their reach as widely and deeply as possible, but the automotive supply chain itself is a capital-intensive industry that requires high-efficiency coordination, and it is not possible for a single company to do everything. The market is large enough, and the existence of each role is necessary.

"After five years, after one or two product iterations, the supply chain will be relatively clear," Huang Ying said. "At that time, the only ones left will be those companies that return to the essence of business." He believes that to gain a foothold in the market, one cannot simply rely on government policy support and the backing of shareholders. Ultimately, the key to a company's success lies in its core product strength, clear positioning, and high cost-effectiveness, which is what it means to "return to the essence of business."

Since its inception, Enjoy Move Tech has been committed to being a software product supplier. Therefore, Enjoy Move Tech has brought its independently developed intelligent vehicle high-performance computing software platform, EMOS. The EMOS platform has a complete toolchain that can help automakers shorten their development cycle and quickly achieve mass production. Currently, intelligent driving software and domain control solutions equipped with EMOS have been mass-produced in multiple models from companies such as Li Auto, SAIC, Nezha, and Great Wall.

"Without its own core products and without considering product positioning and development, a software company can easily become a service provider for automakers," Huang Ying said. "Compared to making products, providing services is relatively easy. Although software service providers have a certain degree of stickiness, the services they provide are all customized, and there is a significant ceiling for development."

From a business perspective, Huang Ying believes that what Enjoy Move Tech needs to do is to build core products to help enterprises achieve non-linear growth in profits. Unlike product service providers that rely on manpower, the growth of profits and the number of employees of software product providers are not directly proportional, but are closely related to sales volume through licensing fees and other means.

"The software industry is a high-risk, high-investment, and high-return field," Huang Ying added. "You may have invested a lot of money in the early stage, but in the end, you may not get a response from automakers. Only when the value of software products and the life cycle of mass-produced models are deeply bound, and when automakers fully recognize this, will this business model be viable, and only then will the company have a place in this field."

"Being a software product supplier is extremely challenging," Huang Ying mentioned. "To be in the automotive industry, the first thing is to have a sense of awe, and the second is to have long-term vision."

"I believe that the basic software field will have a head effect, in other words, in the future, there may only be two or three leading companies left to divide the entire market, and the competition in this market is very cruel and bloody," Huang Ying predicted. "Ultimately, the only ones left will be those companies that return to the essence of business."

Five years ago, Enjoy Move Tech seized the opportunity in the middleware track and diligently developed in the wilderness, creating products with its own core competitiveness. Over the past five years, Enjoy Move Tech has cultivated its internal strength, insisted on being a software product supplier, and won the recognition of the capital market. In five years, Enjoy Move Tech will have its wings full and will be catching up with the global market.

Yiou Auto believes that successful enterprises cannot do without the courage to explore, daring to do what others think is impossible; they also cannot do without the resilience of enterprises, persisting in long-term goals in the face of countless difficulties; and most importantly, they cannot do without the correct strategic direction, returning to the essence of business and doing what is "difficult" but right. Enjoy Move Tech is arming itself with courage, resilience, and the essence of business, steadily moving towards becoming a leading company in the basic software industry.