In 1999, Dean Kamen founded the personal transporter manufacturer, Segway. They delivered their first PT's in 2002. The annual sales target was 40,000 units, with niche markets being Police departments, warehouses, corporate campuses etc.
The company was able to sell 23,500 units by 2006, completing barely half of its annual sales target in 5 years (almost). Segway was eventually sold to a British millionaire. However that story ended when the new owner road a segway off a cliff and died. (Sheesh). In Feb 2013 The Strategies Summit Investments LLC acquired Segway, and disclosed it would be pursuing litigation against Chinese company, Ninebot
Onto Ninebot. Ninebot, like a lot of Chinese companies was born not out of innovation or necessity, but when a group of Chinese engineers were looking at a company and going "You know, we could make what they make for a lot cheaper, sell it for less than they do, and still have higher margins."
So along came Ninebot, which manufactured (guess what?) personal transporters. In China, as opposed to New Hampshire, (low labor costs) and became vastly profitable, even though their original goal was supposed to be artificial intelligence and sustainable development.
Ninebot, I am given to understand was much, much more successful than the disgraced American company, and raised $80 million in their first venture funding round, with lead investors Sequoia Capital and Xiaomi (The electronics company producing Redmi series of smartphones) in April 2015. The same day, on April 15th, they acquired American personal transport maker Segway.
Yes.
Since then Ninebot has done pretty well for itself, and apparently even achieved unicorn status (startup valued at over a billion dollars) and led a Series C funding round in October 2017, raising another $100 million.
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