Jidu completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing: Baidu and Geely jointly increased their holdings

IT Home News on January 26, according to Baidu's official news, Baidu's smart car brand Jidu announced that it has completed nearly 400 million US dollars of Series A financing, and this round of financing is jointly increased by Baidu and strategic partner Geely. After the financing is completed, Jidu will continue to accelerate the process of R&D and mass production, and the first automotive robot concept car will be released at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, and the mass production model will be launched in 2023.

In January 2021, Baidu announced that it would build a car and reload it to form a smart car company. In March, Jidu was founded and received more than $300 million in start-up capital. After only 10 months, Jidu has once again obtained a new round of financing.

▲ Jidu's first car robot concept car appearance

According to the official, Jidu has realized the multi-threaded and efficient development of software and hardware parallels by virtue of the software integration simulation model SIMUCar (Software Integration Mule Car) research and development model. In just 9 months, Jidu successfully integrated the autonomous driving functions of the urban domain and the high-speed domain, and verified its safe and reliable mass production L4 automatic driving capabilities in advance. At present, jet 1.0, the electronic and electrical architecture developed by Jidu, as well as SOA, autonomous driving system, core computing power platform, and related sensors are further iterating towards the mass production state. In addition, the interior and exterior trim of Jidu's first automotive robot mass production vehicle, as well as the design of all parts, have gradually entered the stage of mass production mold development.

Officials said that the successful completion of the new round of financing will help Jidu press the accelerator button in the process of automotive robot research and development and mass production. In the future, Jidu will increase the introduction and training of cutting-edge talents in related fields such as high-level automatic driving, smart cockpit, and intelligent manufacturing; and accelerate the construction of a system for the development and operation of users in the intelligent car market.

Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu, said: "Just 10 months after the start of Jidu, under the blessing of cutting-edge AI technology and high-quality vehicle platform and manufacturing process, Jidu's efficient automotive robot development process has been successfully verified. The brain, nerves and trunk of the automotive robot developed by Jidu are developing efficiently, and when the product is delivered, it will definitely be a benchmark mass production product. I would also like to give special thanks to the entire team in Phase 0-1, who are the practitioners of their dreams and the brave explorers. Next, we will continue to focus on product polishing and development, and bring together more entrepreneurial partners to move forward in the era of smart cars to provide users with more revolutionary products that exceed expectations. ”