Flowtica raises tens of millions of yuan for phone-back e-ink screen

Flowtica, an AI hardware startup, has raised tens of millions of yuan from Vertex Ventures, Source Code Capital, 5Y Capital and the Clear Water Bay Fund to build Verso, an e-ink screen that sticks to the back of a phone.

The deal is a contrarian bet. Most AI-native gadgets have tried to replace the smartphone and failed. Flowtica is betting the opposite way: that the space the phone cannot reach — its back panel — is where a small, cheap, always-on device can win a place in a user's working day.

A screen for the back of the phone

Verso is due to ship in December, after the company's first product, the Scribe AI voice recorder, began deliveries early this year.

The device is 6.5mm thick and weighs 78 grams. It attaches magnetically to the back of a handset and carries an always-on e-ink display, paired with a four-microphone array and bone conduction sensors.

Flowtica positions it as an add-on that does not interrupt normal phone use. It can capture audio in a closed-door meeting, listen through bone conduction during a call, or sit on a desk as a standing to-do list and AI summary screen. Users get that information without waking the phone's power-hungry main display.

Patents point to a wider ambition

Public device certifications and supply-chain records show the applicant behind Flowtica's core hardware is Shenzhen Daochuang Intelligent Innovation Technology. Corporate records database Tianyancha lists a design patent for an "electronic pen box" granted to the company by the China National Intellectual Property Administration on Oct 16 — a fit for the storage and charging case of the Scribe recorder.

More important is the invention patent trail. A Daochuang Intelligent filing for a "data processing method, apparatus, system and terminal device" was published in September 2025 and is in substantive examination. Its abstract describes generating structured recording summaries dynamically, based on specified body movements or sound markers during a recording.

Read together, the filings sketch a route from a single-purpose recorder to an interactive agent: not just a microphone feeding a cloud model, but an attempt to build patent protection around physical interaction, such as bone conduction combined with body buttons, and multimodal data, such as motion recognition and acoustic tagging.

Learning from the failures

The investors, including Li Zexiang's Clear Water Bay Fund, have backed a team that has corrected for the mistakes of the past two years.

The Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1, two of the most heavily funded Western AI-native devices, tried to replace the phone outright with projection and voice. The results were poor reviews and a wave of returns. Devices that abandon the screen and the app ecosystem struggle to balance power draw and heat in a pocketable body, and they add painful interaction lag and high hardware costs.

Flowtica's answer is to give up on replacing the phone. The front of a handset belongs to WeChat, TikTok and games; the back has long been a functional desert. Attaching there lets Verso stay out of the way, with a low-power e-ink panel that closes the information loop without lighting up the main screen.

Hardware first, subscriptions after

The commercial goal is a direct-to-consumer launch through hardware sales, followed by recurring revenue from AI agent subscriptions.

In overseas markets, standalone low-barrier hardware is easily dragged into a price war with white-label suppliers from the Pearl River Delta. Pure AI software, meanwhile, faces high customer acquisition costs and heavy churn after the first month. Both Scribe and Verso pair a one-off hardware purchase with a monthly subscription for advanced AI features.

The patent on generating summaries from motion and sound markers is the anchor of that subscription. A user double-taps the back panel or speaks a keyword to tag a moment, and the AI turns it into structured minutes and tasks — converting raw audio into a higher-value record of context.

The hard part comes next

With tens of millions of yuan in hand and mass production due in December, Flowtica still faces a supply-chain ramp-up and pressure from the phone makers themselves.

Fitting a magnet array, battery, e-ink screen, multiple microphones and wireless modules into a 78-gram body only 6.5mm thick places extreme demands on precision design and injection-moulding tolerances. If the first production run shows warping, e-ink ghosting or weakening magnets, a small hardware team will quickly be buried by refunds and bad reviews from overseas backers.

The bigger strategic risk is substitution by Apple and the Android handset makers.

iOS now builds call recording and on-device summaries through Apple Intelligence directly into the system, while flagship Android phones embed meeting minutes and cross-app note streams. Software transcription has become effectively free for users. Verso offers convenience through its own duplex microphones and a physical rear screen, but consumers must still decide whether a second e-ink display is worth hundreds of dollars plus an ongoing subscription.

The filings on Tianyancha trace a young company drawing on Shenzhen's supply chain and Li Zexiang's engineering network to squeeze through a gap in the post-smartphone market. Flowtica has found a grounded path for an AI hardware industry still searching for one. Whether a lightweight agent clipped to the back of a phone can build a durable hardware-plus-subscription business is the question the company must answer after this round and the December launch.