The automotive robot brand has completed a $400 million Series A financing

"The production model will be launched in 2023."

Author: Darin

Edit: tuya

Producer: Financial Graffiti

Recently, Baidu's intelligent car brand Jidu announced that it has completed nearly 400 million US dollars of A round of financing, 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. According to the Tianyancha App, before this round of financing, Jidu Automobile was indirectly held by Baidu by 55%, and Geely Holdings and Geely Technology jointly held 45% of the indirect shares.

Jidu said 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 talents in high-level autonomous driving, smart cockpits, 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 the first automotive robot products of Jidu will be launched in 2023.

Founded in March 2021, Jidu Automobile is an automotive robot start-up company initiated by Baidu and invested by Geely Group. Robin Li once said that as the carrier of Baidu's car-making dream, the establishment of Jidu is to promote Baidu's years of accumulation in unmanned driving technology and intelligent cockpit technology to the market.

Baidu's car-making speed is not fast. Jidu was founded in March last year, and at the "Baidu World Congress 2021" in August of the same year, Robin Li first proposed the concept of "automotive robot" and released Baidu's "automotive robot". On January 19 this year, Jidu announced some of the product design styles and brand logos of its automotive robot concept car, and plans to display the first automotive robot concept car at the 2022 Beijing Auto Show.

It is reported that jidu auto robot has three major ability attributes: first, the automotive robot has L4 level automatic driving capabilities, which can achieve free movement; second, the accurate recognition of human-vehicle interaction and speech semantics allows cars and people to "communicate naturally"; third, automotive robots can carry out self-learning and iteration according to the user's usage habits, continuously optimize automatic driving and intelligent cockpit experience, and achieve "self-growth".

With the wave of "new four modernizations" (electrification, networking, intelligence, and sharing) sweeping the automotive industry, consumers' requirements for "intelligence" and "networking" are also increasing. Baidu's intelligent and networked products and solutions are mainly in the three sectors of Internet of Vehicles, Intelligent Networking, and Autonomous Driving.

It is understood that its automatic driving solution has long been applied on WM models (WM's third-generation pure electric SUV applies Baidu's automatic driving computing platform Apollo Computing Unit); intelligent networking and vehicle networking solutions have also been enabled on Dongfeng Nissan Venucia Star (equipped with the Vehicle Networking System jointly developed by Venucia and Baidu).

At present, jet1.0, the electronic and electrical architecture JET1.0, which is self-developed as a private brand, as well as SOA, automatic driving system, core computing power platform, and related sensors are further iterating towards mass production. 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. At present, it seems that Jidu has opened up the automatic driving function of the urban domain and the high-speed domain, and verified the mass production L4 level automatic driving capability in advance.