Produced by | Zero One Think Tank
Author | Peng Ye Zhao Xinyu Wang Bingqian
Editor| Zhao Jinlong
Autonomous driving is undoubtedly one of the hottest tracks in recent years. Internet giants, OEMs and parts manufacturers, chip companies, start-ups, etc. have entered the game, and the national level has also introduced a series of support policies from the perspective of digital economy and smart city to jointly promote the development of autonomous driving technology and commercial applications.
From the perspective of capital, in 2021, the primary market equity financing of the autonomous driving track (including chips, radar, sensors, vision, 3D mapping and other supporting technologies) will reach 70 billion yuan, and many unicorns and quasi-unicorns will appear in the invested companies.
Based on public data, this article sorts out the valuations (or market capitalizations) of major domestic autonomous driving companies. According to the data, there are 40 domestic autonomous driving unicorn companies (valued at more than $1 billion), of which there are 4 super unicorns (valued at more than $10 billion): artificial intelligence manufacturer SenseTime and the new car-making force "Wei Xiaoli", they have all been listed. In addition, the valuation of autonomous driving lines or departments of giants such as Baidu and Huawei is not low, with the former reaching $40 billion.
First, 40 unicorns have their own magic, and the application scenarios are becoming more and more abundant
According to the incomplete statistics of Zero One Think Tank, as of the end of February 2022, the valuation of autonomous driving unicorns is mostly concentrated in the range of 1-10 billion US dollars, and the business is concentrated in the direction of car manufacturing, V2X, ADAS algorithms and L4 automatic driving, and its establishment time is mostly around 2015. The top 10 companies with valuations are: NIO (US$58.7 billion), Xiaopeng Motors (US$51.9 billion), Ideal Automobile (US$35.3 billion), SenseTime (US$32.5 billion), Nezha Automobile (US$7 billion), Cambrian (US$5.4 billion), Didi Autonomous Driving, Wenyuan Zhixing, Xiaoma Zhixing and Momenta.
Table 1: Self-driving unicorn valuation/market capitalization list
Source: Zero One Think Tank (Statistics as of February 24, 2022)
Note: * indicates a listed company; the table does not include the autonomous driving lines or departments of Baidu, Huawei and other companies
From the perspective of registered addresses, among the 40 autonomous driving unicorn companies, Beijing has the largest number of 16, followed by 8 in Shanghai, 4 in Shenzhen, and 3 in Guangzhou and Suzhou. The total number of enterprises in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen accounted for 77.5%.
In addition, the total number of enterprises in Suzhou, Nanjing and Changzhou in Jiangsu is 6, and the results are quite eye-catching. In July 2021, Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center officially completed and put into operation has become the highest computing center in the Yangtze River Delta region, Suzhou has attracted more than 60 enterprises including Momenta, Zhijia Technology, Heduo Technology, Xiantu Intelligent, Zhongke Chuangda and so on in the past two years, relying on economic strength, policy support, talent reserves and entrepreneurial ecology bonuses, Jiangsu is catching up with the first echelon of automatic driving.
Figure 1: Urban distribution of autonomous driving companies
Source: Zero One Think Tank
From a business perspective, 10 of the 40 autonomous driving unicorns are involved in L4 autonomous driving systems, 8 car manufacturing companies, and 7 high-precision map manufacturers. Due to the relatively higher technical threshold, the number of autonomous driving chip unicorns is small, and there are only 3 for the time being: Horizon ($3 billion), Cambrian ($5.4 billion), and Black Sesame Intelligence ($2 billion).
Self-driving technology service providers such as Xiaoma Zhixing, Momenta, and Zhijia Technology have developed rapidly in recent years and are expected to enter the ranks of higher valuations in the future. For example, Xiaoma Zhixing achieved the standardized production of the L4-level autonomous driving software and software system PonyAIphaX in 2020; Momenta's Series C series financing totaled more than 1 billion US dollars, obtaining the largest financing in China's autonomous driving field since 2021; and Zhijia Technology, which soared all the way, raised 1 billion US dollars in 6 months, becoming the first company in the global autonomous driving field to be listed through SPAC.
Among the Internet giants, Baidu was the earliest and directly off, as early as 2017 to open the autonomous driving platform, its self-driving business valuation of up to 40 billion US dollars. In September 2021, Baidu DeepWay officially released the first smart heavy-duty truck - Xingtu 1 generation, and Baidu Apollo's autonomous driving travel service platform "Radish Run" has also officially landed in Nanshan District, Shenzhen. Baidu's autonomous driving has achieved outstanding results, and intelligent transportation solutions have landed in more than 50 cities.
Ali, Tencent, Meituan, etc. also attach great importance to the research and development of autonomous driving technology, and the landing is mainly laid out through strategic investment, respectively, investing in Oxbotica, Yuanrong Qixing, and Zhixing. Huawei is even more low-key and powerful, applying for more than 7,300 patents in the field of autonomous driving in 126 countries around the world. According to media reports, Germany's Volkswagen is in talks with Huawei to buy Huawei's autonomous driving division for billions of euros.
From the perspective of financing, horizon, Momenta, and Zhijia Technology ranked in the top three in 2021. In addition to the enthusiasm of local investment institutions, overseas capital also attaches great importance to the Chinese market, With Ma Zhixing invested by the Ontario Pension Fund and the Brunei Sovereign Wealth Fund in Canada, and the overseas capital of Horizon is Baillie Gifford, Japan's ORIX Group, and Intel Investment Intel Capital. Autonomous driving application scenarios are also more abundant, in addition to passenger transport, freight, as well as such as trunk lines, mines, ports, sanitation, logistics and other subdivisions of the track, in recent years, financing has continued to rise, dedicated to the field of sanitation in the field of Wanzhi Driving, Xiantu Intelligent and other enterprises financing scale are at a high level.
Second, 9 quasi-unicorn multi-dimensional innovation, data accumulation began to bear fruit
There is also an approved unicorn enterprise in the autonomous driving track, due to the less disclosure of valuation data, only 9 are sorted out in this article, and their main business is relatively scattered, and the establishment time is mostly within 6 years. In addition to the valuation of Heduo Technology and Yihang Intelligent of more than 300 million US dollars, the valuation of the rest of the enterprises is below 200 million US dollars.
Table 2: Self-driving quasi-unicorn valuation list
Source: Zero One Think Tank (as of February 24, 2022)
From a business perspective, quasi-unicorns are trying to form a dislocation competition with the head enterprises and expand the ability of new application areas. At present, the L2+ level of autonomous driving technology has exploded, and the outbreak of L4/5 may take 5-10 years or even longer. Suppliers such as EHang Intelligent and Fortek chose to lay out the ADAS algorithm, tried to cross the L4 gap, and took the lead in entering the mass production pre-installation and post-loading markets. Smart Eye Technology, Hongjing Intelligent Driving and Forretec focus on the research and development of different sensors, seize the industry trend of multi-sensor integration after the improvement of intelligent driving level in the future, and improve the intelligence of the entire automatic driving system with the advantages of different sensors.
At the same time, quasi-unicorn companies are also trying to enter new market segments or bring new vitality to the old industry, after the low-speed electric vehicle SEV project was forced to stop due to cost problems, Neolithic will combine logistics with SEV, research and development and manufacturing unmanned logistics vehicles, and has now been put into use in logistics, scientific research, ecological multi-scenarios. Yu Wanzhi driving developed unmanned intelligent sanitation sweeper, providing a new solution for the traditional sanitation industry.
From the perspective of financing, EHang Intelligent has obtained a B+ round of financing of 100 million yuan from GAC Capital, and AutoX has completed its fourth financing at the end of 2019. In 2021, Xiaomi acquired Shenzhen Motion Technology for $77.37 million, making the latter an important part of Xiaomi's layout of the autonomous driving industry.
Quasi-unicorn companies have also received attention from overseas capital, and Hongjing Intelligent Driving also received more than 100 million yuan of financing from overseas Prosperity7 venture capital funds in February 2022. However, Zhiyan Technology and Foretek have only obtained A round of financing at present, and Yu Wanzhi has not completed a financing.
Third, the sinking trend of car manufacturing has begun to appear, and the chip side is catching up with the world
At present, the field of autonomous driving has entered the deep-water area of ecological construction, and a large amount of capital has poured into the industry, and competition is intensifying. Under this background, how the original "unicorn" enterprises play the first advantage, continue the advantage battlefield, how to challenge the predecessors of emerging unicorn enterprises, and achieve curve overtaking has become the top priority of the market.
On the one hand, in the field of car manufacturing, car manufacturers such as "Wei Xiaoli" have more resources by virtue of their first-mover advantage, and their market share is rising steadily, and the autonomous vehicle CR3 will reach more than 50% in 2021. The blessing of high capital has prompted "Wei Xiaoli" to further expand the investment quota, promote the reduction of the cost of equipment such as lidar, and reverse the cost reduction and efficiency of enterprises.
On the other hand, the business model of the original autonomous driving enterprises has entered the "burning money" stage, prompting non-head enterprises in the industry to turn to other paths. Among them, Nezha Automobile changed the original self-driving car To B-end as the main sales model, using cost-effective to expand the Market share of the To C-end, and the delivery volume rose to 6011 units in July 2021, an increase of 392% year-on-year, and the monthly sales squeezed out the ideal car, ranking third in the industry.
In high-end areas such as chip design, Cambrian uses its advantages and policy support in deep learning and cloud inference technology to promote the further development of its autonomous driving chip technology, while Horizon is more vertical in business, designing algorithm models and validating algorithms according to the needs of application scenarios to achieve differentiated services for BPU chips.
With the injection of capital and technological progress, the competition in the field of automatic driving will further enter the white-hot stage, and the substitution effect of domestic products, especially chip ends, on overseas products will gradually become significant, and the sinking market will also become the focus of market attention.
End.