The big waves of sand began to see gold
Text/Shanshan Xu
Almost on the same day, the domestic L4 level autonomous driving company Wenyuan Zhixing announced that it had become a partner with NVIDIA, and then was rumored to have completed a new round of financing of more than $400 million.
This is the first financing that Wenyuan Zhixing has obtained since 2022. "LatePost" pointed out that this round of investors includes GAC Group, Bosch Venture Capital, Sino-Arab Industrial Investment Fund and Carlyle Investment Group. Except for GAC, the remaining investors are new shareholders of Wenyuan Zhixing.
According to Tianyan, Wenyuan Zhixing has completed 10 rounds of financing since its inception, and has received a total of 5 rounds of investment in the past two years, with a total disclosure amount of more than 1 billion US dollars, and the current valuation of the company is about 4.4 billion US dollars.
Among the existing autonomous driving technology companies in China, Wenyuan Zhixing is undoubtedly the one with the most frequent capital movements. Wenyuan Zhixing's financing history in the past two years is as follows:
In December 2020, it received a US$200 million B1 strategic investment from Yutong Group, in January 2021, it received a US$310 million Series B financing from Yutong Group and CMC Capital, in May 2021, it received hundreds of millions of US dollars in Series C financing, including IDG Capital and Qiming Venture Capital, etc., in December 2021, it received strategic investment from GAC Group, the specific amount was undisclosed, and in March 2022, it received US$400 million in financing with a post-investment valuation of US$4.4 billion;
Compared with Wenyuan Zhixing, which is supported by GAC, Xiaoma Zhixing is more "commercial" in the background of the capital side. Except for the company's Series B financing led by Toyota Motor in 2020, most of the remaining shareholders are venture capital institutions, including IDG Capital and Sequoia China.
To be precise, Xiaoma Zhixing has maintained a stable financing capacity, and the latest financing this year recently completed its first delivery. The financing process in the past two years is as follows:
In February 2020, it received $462 million in Series B financing, led by Toyota of Japan, in November 2020, it raised $267 million in Series C financing, in February 2021, it completed $100 million in Series C+ financing, and in March 2022, completed the first delivery of Series D financing, without disclosing the amount, and is currently valued at about $8.5 billion;
However, due to a traffic accident last year, Xiaoma Zhixing temporarily withdrew from the list of unmanned test licenses in California. Recently, the company announced that it will recall three test vehicles due to automatic driving system problems.
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In terms of performance, the two companies are not only the main players in the domestic L4 level autonomous driving track, but also have a leading edge in the global market.
According to the "2020 Autonomous Driving Takeover Report" released by the California DMV in 2021, the MPI indicator of Xiaoma Zhixing is in the top five, followed by Waymo and Cruise; in addition, Xiaoma Zhixing and Didi are also in the top ten. By the end of 2021, Wenyuan Zhixing had a total of 14 test vehicles in California, while Xiaoma Zhixing had 38.
AutoX, which is also on the list, has underperformed in terms of fundraising, with the most recent round of funding occurring in January 2020 and receiving no investment for the entire year last year. However, in 2017, the company received Series A financing from companies such as SAIC and MediaTek.
Momenta, which is extremely popular, has completed two rounds of financing in the past two years, and received investment from SAIC, General Motors, Toyota Motor and other companies in November last year, with a Series C financing of more than $1 billion. Another domestic L4 level autonomous driving company, YuanRong Qixing, completed a B+ round of financing in January this year. In the first three months of the year, three domestic L4 level autonomous driving suppliers completed a new round of financing.
"The investment environment is getting colder" is a point raised in the above report. But in fact, according to the "Investment and Financing Data Report on Autonomous Driving Projects in the Past Decade" released by Qichacha, the investment boom in the field of automatic driving entered an explosive period in 2016, and in the following two years, financing continued to rise, and it fell back in 2019. By 2021, there were 94 related financings, with the disclosed financing amount exceeding RMB43.5 billion.
It is clear that investment in autonomous driving will continue to grow.
The "China Autonomous Driving Industry Research Report" jointly released by 36Kr and Hanergy Investment pointed out that there are two main reasons for the growth of industry financing, one is that the situation of abundant liquidity is spreading to the primary market; the second and more important reason is that the development and application of automatic driving technology has gradually been recognized by capital, and the attention of Internet giants and automobile leaders has increased.
So rather than investors being more cautious today, the industry is going through a "big wave" phase, and companies with sustainable technology development advantages will have more opportunities.