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

On January 26, 2022, Baidu's smart car brand Jidu announced that it has completed nearly $400 million in Series A financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and strategic partner Geely. After the financing is completed, 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, 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 established and received more than $300 million in start-up capital. After only 10 months, Jidu has once again received a new round of financing, and its innovative product development process and "car-making" speed beyond the industry level have been recognized by the industry.

Jidu's first car robot concept outside the car

As a reformer in the era of intelligent travel, 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 has successfully integrated the automatic driving functions of the urban domain and the high-speed domain, and verified its safe and reliable 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 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.

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 high-level autonomous 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 car 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 car benchmarks will be presented to the market and consumers.

As an important strategic layout of Baidu Group in the field of intelligent travel, Jidu is committed to building a revolutionary car robot with emotion and wisdom, leading the profound change of travel mode. 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 at Stage 0-1, who are the practitioners of their dreams and 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. ”