Jidu completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing and launched a mass-produced model in 2023

On January 26, Baidu's smart car brand Jidu announced that it has completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing. It is reported that this round of financing by Baidu and strategic partner Geely jointly increased holdings, after the completion of financing, Jidu will continue to accelerate the process of research and development and mass production, the first automotive robot concept car will be released at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, mass production models will be listed in 2023.

Jidu automobile robot concept car; image source: Jidu

Jidu Automobile was founded in March 2021, jointly funded by Baidu and Geely, and Former Mobike co-founder and chief technology officer Xia Yiping served as CEO. Combined with previous reports, the two sides will jointly build a "next-generation" intelligent car based on Geely's newly developed pure electric architecture - Haohan SEA intelligent evolution experience architecture, and at the same time, core technologies such as Baidu artificial intelligence, Apollo autonomous driving, Xiaodu in-vehicle, baidu map and so on will fully empower Jidu Automobile.

According to the data, with the first software integration simulation model SIMUCar (Software Integration Mule Car) research and development mode, Jidu has realized the multi-threaded and efficient development of software and hardware parallels. And in only 9 months, Jidu has successfully integrated the automatic driving functions of the urban domain and the high-speed domain, and verified its mass production L4 level automatic driving capability in advance. At present, jidu's self-developed electronic and electrical architecture JET1.0, as well as SOA, automatic driving system, core computing power platform, and related sensors are further iterating towards the mass production state. In addition, the design of the interior and exterior of Jidu's first automotive robot mass production car and all parts has gradually entered the stage of mass production mold development.

As early as its establishment, Jidu received more than $300 million in start-up capital. Now, after only 10 months, Jidu has once again obtained a new round of financing. Jidu pointed out that the successful completion of the new round of financing will help Jidu press the acceleration 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 high-level automatic driving, smart cockpit, intelligent manufacturing and other related fields, accelerate the construction of the system for the development and operation of users in the intelligent automobile market, and ensure that in 2023, The first automotive robot product of Jidu with excellent user experience, quality and cost advantages, and definition of intelligent automobile benchmarks will be presented to the market and consumers.

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. ”