2025 Manufacturer Update

With the seasons officially shifting from autumn to winter-ish here in the midwest United States where I am based, everything is starting to slow down and get colder with each passing day. Because of this, I’m glad to welcome you all here to a nice warm spot in the glow of another ostensibly annual, late year tradition of the Manufacturer Update. We’ve now officially been at this little side project for going on three years, and while I am a bit late to it this year, it brings out all the same warm and festive memories in my mind that it did the last two years. And by festive, I mean memories of being strangely preachy about unpredictability. Reading back through the starts of both the 2024 Manufacturer Update and 2023 Manufacturer Update, it does seem like I was pushing for a strong sense of “unexpectedness” that I’m not entirely sure was anything but editorially contrived. In 2023 the introduction was more of an internal reflection as to how I didn’t seem to expect anything to change ever and for me to have to address community changes in an ever evolving hobby. In 2024 the reflections turned more outwards towards a crushing schedule of new releases and manufacturers popping up and forcing me to get that article together in short order. In keeping with tradition I will once again turn those reflections inward and wonder how I really thought this year’s update would be any less necessary than either of the previous two. At this point I’m just anointing this Manufacturer Update as an annual pseudo-tradition of the website, much like the Meta Updates and family collection photo. Next year’s update will thus not carry on the editorial theme of unexpectedness, so enjoy it (or suffer from it?) while it lasts here.

To keep all of these updates aligned and reduce my off-week writing workload, I wanted to round out the introduction to this article with more or less the same words I used before to help set the mood on this short article. Throughout 2025 the increasing number of mechanical keyboard switches on the market has made for a daunting and confusing sight for those newcomers looking into switches for the first time. The sheer number of manufacturers, vendors, and brands all vying for attention with their various sales pages and descriptions of any given switch often times make for an incomplete, if not altogether inconsistent set of core facts surrounding any given switch. Often times, one of the most obscured details for a switch is their origin and any sort of information about who specifically manufactured them. While this may seem to be a bit of a pedantic point for consideration when you have to juggle the broader list of facts about a switch including its type, bottom out force, and if they are factory lubed or not, the origin of creation for switches can silently speak volumes as to their quality, consistency, and overall bang-for-your-buck in buying them. For those of us a little more invested in tracking switches, like me, knowing where any given switch comes from allows us to note production process improvements, marketing direction changes, or entirely new designs that are being released by a manufacturer without any need to rely on spotty, inconsistent, or AI generated marketing trends to keep us informed. And while a lot of companies claim to physically make their own switches, the reality is often much more complicated than that. I, specifically, have a pretty high standard of evidence that I require of companies to formally recognize them as independent switch manufacturing entities, and that is in large part due to not wanting to flip flop information on all of you every few weeks in full length reviews. Over the course of the past year or so, a few manufacturers in particular have really established themselves quite thoroughly in my books and I feel rather confident in finally designating a name for them and attaching such to some of their otherwise labeled “unknown” switches that I’ve documented here and collected on my own. These new manufacturers include Co-Gain/XUDA, WEKT, K2, Yusya, and Wingtree. To help familiarize you with where these brands have popped up in my documentation previously, as well as to some of the switches you can expect to see from them moving forward, I’ve gone ahead and provided some short sections below for each of these new faces to the website.

Co-Gain / XUDA

Figure 1: The Co-Gain/XUDA factory as shown on their own website.

Formally known as “Yuequing Xuda Electronics Co. Ltd.”, Co-Gain/XUDA is likely to be the least well known of all of the manufacturers on this list and are known for producing a range of DareU-branded optical and (some) Hall Effect switches over the last several years. Despite being fairly secretive as a whole, as well as optical switches being one of the least supported modern switch technologies among western keyboard enthusiasts, the reason that this manufacturer really is even known about at all is because of the sole work of friend of the website SwitchOddities in uncovering, ordering, and continuing to spread the word about this manufacturer and their switches. Even I admittedly have been fairly quiet on them despite SwitchOddities sending me over a half dozen of these in the last year alone as a result of the sheer lack of background information surrounding them as well as their generally odd shape and structure. (I mean seriously, just take a look at the images of the undersides for these switches below and tell me they’re not supremely odd for modern mechanical keyboard switches.) One of the other reasons I struggled to share much information about them over the past year is simply because of not knowing what specifically to call them either – Co-Gain, XUDA, or some combination of both. As you can clearly see above, I’ve chosen to go with the combinatorial name similar to that of Durock/JWK for all official documentation on this website simply because the switches made by this manufacturer seem to be referred to by the western switch community at large as Co-Gain as a result of nearly all of the switches they’ve produced having this name listed on the undersides of the housings, in spite of their website clearly stating that their formal brand name is XUDA.

Figure 2: A handful of HE and Optical switch designs from Co-Gain/XUDA available from SwitchOddities' storefront as of the time of writing.

Figure 3: Underside of the Co-Gain/XUDA-made DareU Optical Color Red switch showing its odd structure and 'Co-Gain' housing branding.

WEKT

Figure 4: Zoom in on the new nameplates of the WEKT-made XCJZ x WEKT Wasabi linear switches.

Very shortly following the 2024 Manufacturer Update, there was some news out of some eastern facing keyboard forums that struck me and the western facing switch community with a bit of surprise: LICHICX was struggling rather hard financially trying to stay afloat. The company which had first popped up in the 2023 Manufacturer Update and taken the western keyboard scene by storm with switches such as the LICHICX Lucys, Invokeys x Alas Daydreamer/Nightshades, and Varmilo ‘L’ Series, was not only doing so poor as to consider shuttering their doors permanently, but even selling off some of their assets in order to recoup debts they owed to quite a few people. Setting off a “bankruptcy auction” of sorts, or whatever the nearest Chinese business equivalent was, the assets of LICHICX such as their assembly machines and even famous silent switch molds were sold off to a collective of designers and vendors who banded together to use these under a new switch manufacturing umbrella – WEKT. (This has been confirmed both through postings online as well as corroborated by western facing contacts with a foot in the eastern switch world such as the owner of Unikeys.) Explained a bit further in an announcement video posted to billibilli under the WEKT name as well as through a Douyin account named similarly, WEKT has hit the ground running trying to make up for the less than savory moments at the end of LICHICX by offering refunds and/or discounts to people affected by LICHICX’s insolvency as well as vowing to improve upon their switch designs. It was even suggested by some users, and also collaborated through recent collaborations between WEKT and Ikyex and XCJZ, that this new umbrella would also be folding in collaborative names in the eastern switch scene as well. While not too many WEKT switches have made their way to the US yet, and certainly known have blown up with the same degree of attention as the LICHICX switches despite them producing color matched replacements for such, photos have been circulating of “new silencing technologies” coming in WEKT switches that could very well change that in 2026.

Figure 5: Demonstration photos of the new silencing mechanisms in the WEKT-made Lucy silent linear switches from switch collector krikun.

K2

Figure 6: Image of the K2-made WS Flux HE switches from the WS Flux HE Switch Review.

While this year’s list has a notable couple of manufacturers that feel incredibly small in size and equally as transparent in their existence, these feelings are usually only super noticeable when collectors and documenters like me can’t pin down any physical trace of that company. Even when a manufacturer has robust sales pages on the normal platforms, a decent marketing presence on social media, and even name recognition amongst some members of the community, not being able to just see physical production equipment or the exterior of a building in photographs from them really makes it seem like they could actually just be three well known manufacturers in a trenchcoat trying to pretend to be someone new for some more marketing flair. Even though this demand for evidence is perhaps a bit picky of us, just having that extra little bit of proof of life really sets us at ease. Well unfortunately that is until K2 came around. Despite providing just that sort of proof people like me crave in the form of almost two dozen different photos from the interior of their production facility as I shared in my WS Flux HE Switch Review, they still just seem to be as mysterious and elusive as an unknown manufacturer. Introduced to you all earlier this year in that very switch review, I learned about ‘K2’ as a manufacturer not too long before that through Wuque Studio who shared first their switches with me and then the marketing facility photos in an attempt to assuage me that they were in fact a real place. And while I certainly can’t argue with photographing proof of the place, there is a strong lack of branding or other information about K2 out there that just gives them such a strange, almost ethereal vibe to their existence. The single most strong piece of evidence that they actually do exist as a manufacturer is not those photos of their facility, though, rather it’s the fact that they seem to be attributed to switches that look unlike anything else anyone else puts out. Boasting octagonal shaped stems, T-slide rail designs, custom housing schemes with unusual LED diffuser shapes, and a whole host of other features, the majority of their very few releases seem to be tied closely to Wuque Studio here in the US. While we have yet to see too many switches hit the shores from K2 other than the Flux HE and Biglucky series, their high price tags mixed with their over the top engineering designs leads me to believe that they’ve got quite some interesting designs planned for 2026 and beyond…

Figure 7: The only internal photo provided to me from within the K2 facility that features any distinctive branding.

Yusya

Figure 8: New and old 'Yusya' branded switches collected over the years.

Of all of the manufacturers on this list, ‘Yusya’ takes home the double prize in being the ones that have the least amount of information surrounding their existence and the least number of switches attributed to them relative to their length of supposed existence. Believe it not, switches reasonably considered to have been manufactured by Yusya – which I’ve somehow incidentally been bastardizing as “Yusuya” this whole time – have actually been around for more than three years now. Thanks to work carried out by SwitchOddities as well as ‘Shades’, a member of the SwitchModders Discord community, we’re now able to pin down not only a formal name for Yusya “Yueqing Joshua Electronics Co., Ltd.”, but also a website, contact information, and a physical address for them. In an attempt to do even further digging on such and uncover the vaunted factory external/internal photographs, SwitchOddities was met with a surprising number of dead ends with multiple contacts in the east confirming the existence of Yusya but kind of shrugging their shoulders and saying “yeah, they’re around” when asked for more information. Yusya doesn’t even seemingly have a formal storefront in the normal places like TaoBao or AliExpress, and yet they get around enough that people in the eastern community seem to know of them. While this may seem somewhat of a strange set of circumstances to read, it actually parallels a similar historical path that SwitchOddities went through in uncovering Haimu, who remained relatively secretive and in the shadows until they got their feet set in the market. So while some switch fanatics may be somewhat still out on Yusya, I think there’s enough proof of life out there for me to tentatively recognize them for now while simultaneously hope they’ll soon find footing in the still surprising large mechanical keyboard switch scene and start cranking out switches like Haimu did.

Figure 9: Close up of a 'Yusya' nameplate from one of the oldest Yusya switches that I know of.

Wingtree

Figure 10: Collaborative post between Unikeys and content creator bokehbob showing off both Wingtree-made switches as well as their distinctive packaging.

The range of how switch manufacturers choose to operate always makes formal documentation decisions such as these difficult on my part. Some come out of the gate swinging with a full store front, aggressive branding, photographic and contact-based proof of life, and more. Some slowly unfurl through each of those stages over years and years and eventually come to wider community acknowledgement and acceptance. And then there’s manufacturers like “Wingtree” (Dongguan Yushu Electronics) that just decide they’re going to crank out a shit ton of switches and use the sheer volume of what they’re producing and conversations that they’re generating as a mountain of second-hand evidence for their existence that could well outweigh the mole hill of first-hand evidence some other manufacturers have. If a single switch from new manufacturer were to pop up out of nowhere in the hands of a switch collector like XCJZ, a noted Chinese collector and designer of switches, that would be one thing to not think too strongly of. But if XCJZ were to have a collaborative switch design released with that same manufacturer, that would be something rather substantial to corroborate their reality. Fold in the additional facts that Unikeys’ owner has spoken highly of them and the manufacturer Keygeek has spoken highly of them in stating that the Wingtree factory is ran by a friend of theirs, and I’m not sure I can ask for a picture of the factory as “ultimate proof” without sounding utterly unreasonable. Wingtree very much seems like a real manufacturer just based on the sheer number of big names they seem to be connected to, and I’m willing to take the risk in saying they’re authentic based on that alone. The sheer rate at which Wingtree has hit the ground running in the western switch scene over the few, brief months since they first made their appearance (August 2025) suggests that there’s not only a lot more to come from them in the way of switches, but hopefully information and marketing as well. Despite being a smidge proactive on my behalf in formally recognizing them as a manufacturer, for once, I fully expect that they’ll release a switch at some point in 2026 that will have me writing an entire background section on them for a review and, to be entirely honest, I’m kind of excited about it.

Figure 11: SwitchModders' Discord conversation with Keygeek regarding the identity and existence of Wingtree as a manufacturer.

Figure 12: Wingtree switches presently available from Unikeys' storefront as of the time of writing.

Traditionally, I’ve rounded out these manufacturer updates with only a few spare words looking forward to the next year and never really anything in the way of a formal ‘conclusion’ section. However, unlike the previous two years, there have been switches released throughout 2025 that do ultimately and fundamentally point to a flaw in assigning singular manufacturers of origin to switches like I regularly do here in my documentation. This may be a present flaw that none of us truly understand the scope of. It may also be a flaw that only becomes evident through a lack of future proofing on my part. Though what this flaw specifically is is the idea of the “combinatorial manufacturing paradigm” that I discussed in depth in the background of the Novelkeys Classic Blue Switch Review back in August. In the background section of that review, Kevin, who is the owner of the TypePlus brand attributed with having “manufactured” these switches, very plainly stated that the CAD design and prototyping of the switches, the manufacturing of their molds, and the injection molding of the parts to make the switches were all carried out in three separate manufacturing facilities and not vertically integrated as would be suggested by saying they were “made by TypePlus”. Much like how I point out in that review, I still do not entirely known how to handle that information from a documentation and positive manufacturer attribution perspective. I still really haven’t come up with a way to deal with a hypothetical switch that could be designed by Cherry, carved into molds by Gateron, and then injection molded and assembled by Outemu, something which has yet to happen (that I know of) but reasonably could based on what Kevin shared above. All that I can confidently say with this information is that the existence of such a way of switch manufacturing is that it will make positive assignments of origin more difficult for me moving forward and that I’ll simply have to contend with such in time and the same way I always have – as openly and honestly as I can. And in the case you think this is some far flung problem that I won’t need to deal with for another few years – it’s already here. Even this new list of manufacturers alone contains a crossover as Wingtree’s Hall Effect switches they’ve been selling have been confirmed to have been made by Co-Gain / XUDA.

Figure 13: Screencap of direct conversations between SwitchModders' Discord user mimp6508 and Wingtree's customer support regarding their magnetic switches.

As it would seem, the switch manufacturing world may be more interconnected than we could have ever imagined.