This startup’s smart bike is strong enough to lift a Lambo, and it’s smashing crowdfunding records

A week or so ago, Xiaomi concluded the crowdfunding campaign for its smart bike, successfully raising nearly US$700,000 in preorders. Sounds impressive, right? Now what if I told you that a Chinese smart bike startup has already doubled that total, with several weeks left to go in the campaign?

Meet the SpeedX Leopard, a smart bike from Beijing-based startup Beast Cycling (the company goes by the name SpeedX outside China). The Leopard has so far raised more than US$1.4 million on Kickstarter, making it the most successful smartbike crowdfunding ever, and one of the 100 most successful crowdfunding projects of all time. With more than two weeks still to go in its campaign, it has already attracted 800 backers despite a pretty high price tag (the cheapest early bird option was US$1,200, and the bike itself will retail for US$1,700, with a “Pro” model that costs well over two grand.)

So what’s the SpeedX Leopard got going for it? Check the pitch for yourself:

The Leopard boasts impressive specs like a Shimano 105 drivetrain and TRP fully internal brakes, but it really has two main selling points: its carbon-fiber frame and its integrated smart controls. On the smart software side, the bike tracks a whole heap of metrics – time, lap time, speed, cadence, calories, altitude, GPS, distance, weather, power, slope, and heart rate (if you have a compatible heart rate monitor) – with a built-in dashboard. It also has built-in brake lighting and a dock for your GoPro or other action camera. That means no strapping your phone to your bike and no getting tangled in wires, because the Leopard’s wires are all inside the frame.

And that frame? It’s lightweight (the entire bike weighs just 7.9 kg) and pretty strong. Strong enough to quite literally lift a Lamborghini, as you can see in this video the Beast folks have provided:

Given all of that, it’s probably no surprise that Beast has attracted more than just the Kickstarter variety of backer. The company raised a US$1 million seed round from the prestigious Zhenfund in early 2015, and a series A worth nearly US$8 million from Zhenfund and Innovation Works later that year. Last month, it raised an additional series-A-plus round worth US$4.6 million.

This isn’t the company’s first foray into cycling. Beast launched a SpeedX cycling app last year that the company claims has over 500,000 users (no word on how many are active), and it also launched a cycling computer it calls SpeedForce last year on Indiegogo. But the SpeedX Leopard and Leopard Pro are clearly a big part of the company’s future. That’s the reason for the comparably low pricing (remember the Xiaomi smart bike costs US$3,000, and western bikes with internal wiring like the Leopard cost even more): Beast wants to get cyclists onto its bicycles, and from there it can offer a variety of value-added services and upgrades.