Car stuff (public number: chedongxi)
Author | Alice
Edited by | Xiaohan
On January 10, Chedongdong news, vehicle-grade MEMS lidar solution provider Yilu Technology officially announced the completion of hundreds of millions of yuan Pre-C round of financing.
This round of financing is led by Xiaopeng Automobile, and SAIC Motor's Shangyi Capital, Dongfeng Bocom Automobile Fund and old shareholder Intel Capital continue to raise bets. China Renaissance Capital acted as the sole financial advisor for the financing.
This round of financing will be used for the iterative development of a full range of vehicle-grade front-loading mass-produced lidar products with long and short distance of one-way technology, strengthening production line upgrades and supply chain and total quality management, and continuing to promote the research and development and commercialization of vehicle-grade MEMS lidar solutions.
MEMS lidar is a sensor that uses laser light to achieve 3-dimensional spatial imaging, and is the most core sensor in autonomous vehicles. It uses MEMS micro-galvanometers to do extremely fast scanning of the emitting laser in space, and obtains distance information in stereoscopic space by measuring the laser signal. MEMS lidar is characterized by high resolution, vehicle-grade reliability and low cost.
▲MEMS lidar
At present, a total of 5 rounds of financing has been obtained by a path of technology, investors in addition to a number of institutions, there are Xiaopeng Automobile and other car companies into the game, it can be seen that lidar on the car has become a major trend, car companies are robbing lidar manufacturers.
First, lidar is steadily delivering to accelerate the pace of mass production
There are two main products in the solid-state MEMS lidar product line of one-path technology, namely short-range blindness-compensating MEMES lidar ML-30S and long-range forward MEMS lidar ML-Xs.
▲One-path technology MEMS lidar product line
These two products have reached commercial cooperation with a number of enterprises in the fields of autonomous driving trunk logistics, terminal distribution, unmanned ports, Robotaxi and robotics, and have been in the process of designating a number of passenger car OEMs.
Among them, in terms of trunk logistics, Yijing Technology has reached a strategic cooperation with Yingche Technology in 2020 on the commercialization of autonomous driving solutions for trunk logistics trucks, and The L3 level autonomous driving trucks of Yiche Technology are equipped with the ML series of LiDAR of Yiche Technology.
▲The L3 self-driving truck of Yingche Technology adopts a one-path technology lidar
In terms of unmanned distribution at the end, the fifth generation of Jingdong Logistics intelligent express delivery vehicle will be equipped with a solid-state MEMS lidar ML-30s of a scientific and technological product.
According to the official website, the partners of One Path Technology are mainly JD.com, Yuanrong Qixing, Yinche and Sany, and the main direction of mass production is to provide overall lidar solutions for related vehicles in various scenarios in specific areas, such as L3+ADAS, high-speed logistics, smart mining areas, smart ports, smart parks, smart buses, Robotaxi, etc.
At present, the full range of MEMS long and short range products is being delivered steadily, accelerating the pace of mass production of MEMS lidar in enterprises.
Second, the average age of the team is 31 years old The company has completed 5 rounds of financing in the 5 years since its establishment
Yijing Technology is the earliest team in China to do solid-state lidar for automotive applications, and was established in Beijing in November 2017. After nearly 5 years of development, the current team size of the company is close to 200 people, the average age is 31 years old, the proportion of R & D personnel is nearly two-thirds, and the proportion of doctors is as high as 15%.
The core team comes from Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Madrid Institute of Technology, Caltech, Cornell University, University of Leuven and other well-known universities at home and abroad, as well as Bosch, Autoliv, Osram, Ericsson, Sony and other internationally renowned Tier1, optoelectronic semiconductor companies.
In the past 5 years since its establishment, the MEMS lidar technology of Yijing Technology has been recognized by the capital market.
According to the official website of Yijing Technology, it has completed 5 rounds of financing.
In November 2017, Yijing Technology obtained an angel round of financing, and the investors were FutureCap, Inno Angel, and PowerCloud VC, and the specific financing amount was not disclosed. In July 2018, Yijing Technology received tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing, with investors such as Cloud Angel, Dongke Chuang and so on. In April 2020, Yijing Technology completed the 70 million YUAN A+ round of financing led by Fosun Ruizheng and Songhe Capital. In June 2021, Yijing Technology announced the completion of a multi-hundred million yuan B round of financing, which was led by Intel Capital and Innovation Factory in rounds B1 and B2 respectively.
In January 2022, Yijing Technology officially announced the completion of a multi-hundreds of millions of yuan Pre-C round of financing, this round of financing led by Xiaopeng Automobile, SAIC Group's Shangyi Capital, Dongfeng Bank of Communications Automobile Fund, and old shareholder Intel Capital continued to raise bets. China Renaissance Capital acted as the sole financial advisor for the financing.
In response to this financing, Shi Tuo, founder and CEO of Yijing Technology, commented: "Empowering intelligent driving and helping smart travel is our common hope and vision. We can see that the figure of solid-state lidar has spread throughout the terminal distribution, high-speed trunk logistics, unmanned ports, robots and other application fields, and the 'tide on the car' of lidar has also released a strong signal that lidar will usher in mass production prospects, which fully proves that Yijing Technology has made the right strategic choice in the research and development of solid-state MEMS technology routes and commercial landing. ”
▲ Shi Tuo, CEO & founder of Yijing Technology
Zhang Xiaofeng, vice president of Xiaopeng Automobile, and Zhang Xiaoqi, investment director of the leading investor, said that as an important safety and redundant sensor for advanced driver assistance and future automatic driving, Xiaopeng Automobile very much recognizes the efforts of the team in optimizing the transceiver structure, chipping of key devices and mass production, etc. Yilu Technology provides the possibility for the large-scale mass production of cost-effective vehicle-grade lidar.
Conclusion: Lidar on the car has become a major trend
At present, automatic driving technology is ushering in a new development node, and the maturity of automatic driving technology will drive the rapid development of the lidar market.
Shangyi Capital believes that with the growth of the lidar mass production trend and penetration rate will promote the overall scale of the industry, it is expected that by 2025, the global lidar market size will reach billions to tens of billions of DOLLARs. Solid-state and intelligent is the trend of the times. Yijing Technology selects MEMS lidar route, self-developed chip, adopts a unique design architecture, takes into account the detection performance and vehicle specification reliability, and is in the leading position in the industry.
By working with strategic partners in the field of autonomous driving to promote the commercialization process of various scenarios of autonomous driving, Ichigo Technology believes that it will become a leading supplier in the field of commercial vehicles and passenger cars ADAS+L3.