Shanghai’s Haizol bets on AI agents to quote custom parts from Chinese factories

Haizol (海智在线) is a Shanghai platform for buying non-catalogue, drawing-based parts: CNC machining, sheet metal, injection moulds, casting and stamping. Buyers upload a CAD file with material, tolerances, quantities and required certifications, and the request for quotation goes only to factories that have passed the platform’s vetting and pay a membership fee. According to the company, quotes arrive in about 24 hours, and 90% of requests get prices from eight or more factories.

In April 2026 Haizol launched an AI agent workbench for R&D teams, buyers and factories, according to a report published in July by the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization. Vice president Xu Xiang (徐香) said an experienced engineer needs at least 5 to 10 minutes to quote a single drawing, and that a product with dozens of drawings used to take a good part of the day. “Now we can handle all the quotes in under 20 minutes,” he said. According to him, the agents understand the request, read the drawing, break down the processes, flag risks and build the price.

The report includes an example from the factory side. Zhou Zhenhua, who runs a machining shop in Dongguan, said the tool found a dimension error in an Italian sheet-metal customer’s drawing before production. The customer confirmed the error, and rework was avoided. Without AI, he said, the problem would only have surfaced after the machines were programmed.

The base behind this, according to the company, holds 800,000 Chinese factories described by more than 300 equipment, process and capacity tags, and 300,000 buyers in 117 countries. In June 2025, when it announced the Series B+, Haizol cited more than 700,000 factories and 280,000 buyers in 107 countries. According to a 2025 profile by Chuangyebang (创业邦), 22.6 billion yuan of orders were posted on the platform in 2024, and cumulative purchase volume exceeded 100 billion yuan.

The Series B+, of more than 100 million yuan, was led by the 国家服务贸易创新发展引导基金, a national guidance fund for innovation in trade in services, with 上海漕河泾临方投资, 孚腾资本 and 杭州高新金投梧桐基金 taking part. The company said it would spend the money on AI tools and on winning large buyers and emerging markets abroad.

She Ying founded Haizol in 2015 with seven co-founders. Before that she spent six and a half years at a US industrial B2B platform, where she started in sales and rose to Asia-Pacific CEO. The revenue model, according to the company, is the membership fee paid by factories: buyers pay nothing to request quotes, compare offers or use an account manager. The platform offers three confidentiality levels: no NDA, Haizol’s standard NDA, or the buyer’s own NDA, which the factory must sign and upload before seeing the file.

CSP take: for Brazilian importers of drawing-based parts, Haizol tackles the slowest step in sourcing, which is finding and comparing factories able to make the part. AI speeds up quoting, but it does not replace what protects the buyer: an approved sample, pre-shipment inspection and a contract with a clear specification. The platform itself says a price far below the others may signal a misread drawing. This reading is ours, not Haizol’s.