Hot money poured in, in the first two months of this year, autonomous driving related companies have obtained financing of more than 10 billion yuan.
The topic of "autonomous driving" investment and entrepreneurship staged in the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger has indeed opened the head for the financing tide in 2022. According to incomplete statistics, a total of 15 companies received new financing in the first two months of this year, including 4 lidar companies, 3 self-driving truck companies and other self-driving solution providers.
The increase in public attention has brought the attention of capital, what are the financing companies in the first two months of autonomous driving in 2022? Under the capital boom, things that change history are happening.
Lidar continues to heat up
Continuing last year's capital boom, in the first two months of this year, 4 lidar companies have announced new financing, of which Velodyne was directly acquired by Amazon for 39 million shares, if you understand Amazon's recent process in autonomous driving, you can roughly judge why Amazon wants Velodyne to hold shares.
Since last year, Amazon has invested in the self-driving company Aurora, acquired the self-driving company Zoox, and invested in the self-driving truck company Zhijia Technology, except for the lack of hardware sensors. As soon as the news of the acquisition of Velodyne's stake came out, Velodyne's stock price soared nearly 100% at one point in after-hours trading.
Source Velodyne Lidar official website
Take a look at the lidar investment company is full of familiar faces, at the beginning of the year, the lidar company completed the Pre-C round of financing, led by Xiaopeng, SAIC Group's Shangyi Capital, Dongfeng Bank of Communications Automobile Fund, and old shareholder Intel Capital, with a total amount of hundreds of millions of yuan.
As the first car company to announce the launch of lidar, the Xiaopeng P5 is equipped with 2 lidars from DJI's Lanwo Technology, while the new model G9 chooses Sagitar Juchuang. However, the new model of Xiaopeng P7 has been exposed in recent road test photos, and it is suspected that the position is vacant at the headlights, suspected of preparing for the installation of lidar.
The products of Yijing Technology, which Xiaopeng has invested in this time, have not appeared on the list of mass-produced passenger cars. However, the main research and development direction of Yijing Technology is all-solid-state lidar solutions, and the main direction of mass production and landing is to provide overall lidar solutions for related vehicles in various scenarios in specific areas.
At present, the mainstream vehicle-mounted lidar is mainly semi-solid, and the mass production of all-solid-state lidar is currently difficult, with higher technical requirements and greater cost.
Xiaopeng and Amazon have similarities in their investment trajectory in autonomous driving, that is, full betting and multi-point occupancy. Just on the 21st of last month, Xiaopeng set up a new autonomous driving company in Guangzhou, which coincided with Xiaopeng's previously revealed plan to build Robotaxi. He Xiaopeng has said that in the second half of this year, Xiaopeng will begin to explore the Robotaxi business, and will first land in Guangzhou.
Two other local lidar companies, Sagitar Juchuang and Liangdao Intelligence, have also received new financing. It is worth mentioning that Sagitar Juchuang is completing a new round of financing, and there is news that it will go public in Hong Kong. The investors in this round of financing include Xiaomi, BYD, Yutong Group and so on. Officials did not disclose the specific amount, but it is reported that this round of financing may reach 2.4 billion yuan. Previously, the largest single financing amount in the field of lidar was $370 million of Hesai Technology.
Last year, Hesai Technology terminated its IPO on the Science and Technology Innovation Board and failed to become the first domestic lidar stock. This year, can Sagitar Break the Shackles?
Lidar is the only way for automotive autonomous driving from L2 to L3-L4, the industry generally believes that 2023 is the first year of the outbreak of L3 automatic driving, and now there are many lidar in the fixed point mass production process, which is also a reason why lidar investment is very hot.
From the perspective of investment, Yunxiu Capital said that the current investment preference is to invest at both ends, one is to chase the head of large projects, in a certain technical route to achieve commercialization and performance to determine the lead, the second is to invest early in the small, in some can be overtaken in the corner of the technical route to do early layout.
Autonomous driving of commercial vehicles also requires long-term financing
Recently, autonomous commercial vehicles have been mentioned more and more frequently, and the scope of autonomous driving applications in scenarios such as trunk logistics, same-city express transportation, terminal distribution, and park logistics has become larger.
With robotaxi's commercialization process slow, autonomous commercial vehicles have stepped forward. Self-driving head companies such as Xiaoma Zhixing and Clerk Zhixing, which specialize in Robotaxi, have also learned to walk on multiple legs and develop the commercial vehicle business.
The pony's truck business is in full swing, and its team has branched. In July 2021, Zhao Ruixuan, the vice president of Xiaoma Zhixing, who was originally responsible for strategic cooperation and financing, left to establish "Xingjiao Technology", and its main business was also benchmarked against Xiaoma Zhika. In November 2021, Kinte Smart Card, a start-up company that does self-driving truck technology research and development and logistics transportation, was established, and the two founders were Pan Zhenhao, CTO of Xiaoma Zhika, and Sun Youhan, head of planning and control of Xiaoma Zhika's US team.
In January this year, Kinte Smart Card received tens of millions of dollars in angel round financing, which was exclusively invested by Wuyuan Capital. Wuyuan Capital was also the leading investor in the A round of financing of self-driving company Xiaoma Zhixing.
The rapid growth of the self-driving logistics track has given startups great promise. Xiao Yiting, a partner at Chentao Capital, who has invested in mine autonomous driving companies such as Tage Zhixing and Yikong Zhixing, said that there is still a long time before the batch replication of autonomous commercial vehicles, the pattern is undecided, and there may be new startups to join.
Another mainline technology also completed the B round of financing led by BAIC Production and Investment. Mainline Technology was established relatively early, and in 2017, it was established to obtain angel financing from iFLYTEK, and then WEILAI Capital and Bosch have invested in it. In the trunk logistics scenario, Mainline Technology has obtained the first batch of commercial vehicle autonomous driving test licenses in Beijing, and the cumulative transportation mileage has exceeded 1.5 million kilometers.
At the same time, Hongjing Intelligent Driving, which has completed the new financing, is also focusing on the automatic driving solution of L3 logistics heavy trucks, and its L3-level trunk logistics digital smart heavy truck HyperTruck One is scheduled to be mass-produced in 2022.
While startups are busy raising money, there are new developments in Waymo Via across the ocean. Foreign media reported that in February, Waymo and logistics company C.H. Robinson has reached a partnership to test self-driving trucks in Texas. Previously, Waymo had announced the construction of a hub for its self-driving trucks on a 9-acre plot of land near Texas' Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
Logistics company C.H. Robinson has a network of 200,000 shippers and carriers, as well as data on more than 3 million routes, and Waymo will provide it with automated freight technology and security personnel, a partnership that will promote the continuous expansion of autonomous driving power in North America.
On the last day of February, the self-driving truck company Wincher Technology announced the news of financing, a $188 million Series B+ equity financing. This round of financing was led by Sequoia China and Legend Capital, and the existing shareholders Meituan and NIO Capital have followed suit.
The autonomous driving of commercial vehicles has landed in specific areas such as trunk logistics, urban buses, parks, and ports, allowing more and more enterprises to see the prospects of commercialization, and capital has also paid attention to such scenarios accordingly.
"In 2022, there will be more commercial landings and commercial closed-loop logic verified, and some projects with strong technology and solid customer resources will be optimistic." Yunxiu Capital believes.
"However, at present, due to the immature ecology of the industrial chain, the prices of various sensing devices, wire control chassis and other parts have not yet fallen to a range that supports large-scale landing, whether it is commercial vehicles or passenger cars, we believe that it will take a long time to land on a large scale." From the perspective of demand, the long-term demand for passenger cars will still be greater than that of commercial vehicles, both in terms of absolute quantity and the size of the operating market. ”
Exclusive investment relationship
On Feb. 2, a $1.35 billion investment overwhelmed most self-driving companies, none other than General Motors' Cruise, the second-largest self-driving company in the United States. The investor is the SoftBank Vision Fund.
This is the second follow-up investment of the SoftBank Vision Fund, and in 2018, the SoftBank Vision Fund reached an investment intention with Cruise, investing $900 million in the first stage, and promising cruise to invest another $1.35 billion after opening the commercial landing of RoboTaxi.
SoftBank had previously invested in mobility services such as Uber and Didi, and after the development of autonomous driving, SoftBank entered the market at a time when Cruise was in desperate need of funds, and the $2.25 billion investment in autonomous driving was a sensation. Robotaxi's public-facing service was expected in 2019, but it wasn't until 2022 that Cruise announced it was ready.
On Feb. 28, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) issued Cruise and Waymo with security officers and paid self-driving services: Cruise can provide paid self-driving services at no more than 30 mph on some public roads in San Francisco, and Waymo can provide paid self-driving services at any time in designated areas of San Francisco and San Mateo County with speeds of no more than 65 mph. This is another milestone for Cruise and autonomous driving.
The second large inflow of funds, not only SoftBank, but also the expectations of Cruise have increased a lot.
On February 18, Cruise said it had officially applied to U.S. regulators to build the Cruise Origin self-driving car and deploy it on the road, which was not only autonomous, but also did not even have a steering wheel, brake pedals and other devices. If the relevant regulations are passed, the Origin car jointly developed by GM and Honda is expected to be launched in 2023.
Cruise Origin Pure Electric Self-Driving Shared Cars
Previously, there have also been applications for permission to take autonomous vehicles without steering wheels, but no vehicles have yet been granted this permit. Cruise's fight may usher in the era of driverless driving at the regulatory level.
Another exclusive investment came from Boyuan Capital, Boyuan Capital, a market-oriented investment platform owned by Bosch, which made a new round of strategic investment in geometric partners. "Bosch China is optimistic about the first-mover advantage and high acceptance of the local market in the field of autonomous driving, and continues to invest in key technologies." Chen Yudong, president of Bosch China, said.
Earlier this year, Bosch announced that it has worked with Volkswagen's software company to develop autonomous driving systems, and is expected to go into mass production next year. Bosch has acquired the German 3D mapping company Atlasc. After that, Bosch invested exclusively in the smart chip unicorn company Black Sesame Intelligence, followed by the 4D millimeter wave radar company Geometry Partners.
Why is Bosch optimistic about geometric partners? Its main 4D millimeter wave imaging radar is the main sensing, visible vision and infrared imaging multi-sensing fusion of automatic driving software and hardware integration system, which also complements bosch autonomous driving hardware sensor section.
Zhu Xuan, managing partner and CEO of Boyuan Capital, said, "Millimeter wave radar is one of the core sensors of smart cars, and looking at the product iteration and technical route of the global millimeter wave radar manufacturers, its upgrade and evolution direction is 4D imaging radar. 4D millimeter wave imaging radar retains the all-weather detection characteristics of traditional radar, while being able to detect stationary objects and output high-density point cloud data, which is very suitable for multi-sensor fusion schemes under L3/L4 automatic driving, and will also become an important means of safe redundancy of automatic driving. ”
In February, Hongjing Intelligent Driving also received an exclusive investment from Saudi Aramco's venture capital fund Prosperity7. Positioned as a global financial venture capital firm, Prosperity7 is Saudi Aramco's $1 billion venture capital fund launched last year in areas ranging from start-up enterprises, blockchain, financial and industrial technology, healthcare and education solutions. The fund is headquartered in Dhahran with branches in Palo Alto, New York, Beijing and Shanghai.
The exclusively invested autonomous driving enterprises have undoubtedly reached a closer binding with the investor, and it is also the investor's accurate bet on automatic driving.
Che Yun summary
At the beginning of 2022, capital flows to the autonomous driving segment.
Lidar momentum is fierce, capital tends to head and start-ups, in the pattern is undecided, a more balanced technical route will be trusted by car companies, domestic lidar latecomers are expected to achieve curve overtaking.
In view of the general belief that the outbreak of L3 autonomous driving in 2023, a large amount of capital has been invested in industrial chain enterprises such as sensors and chips to prepare for the climax of next year. Car companies are also actively investing in related enterprises to card slot autonomous driving supply chain.
After autonomous driving has experienced a capital bubble, the concept is no longer the driving force for financing, and technology is king is the basic principle. Some investment institutions told Che Yunmei that autonomous driving mainly values the technical ability of the team, and in 2022, it is more optimistic about projects with strong technology.