After receiving three consecutive financings in a year, why has the autonomous driving lingjun technology become a fragrant feast?

On April 13, Lingjun Technology announced that it has completed tens of millions of yuan pre-A round of financing, which is the third financing obtained by Lingjun Technology in 12 months. Founded in 2016, Lingjun Technology previously focused on passenger car tracks, and in the second half of 2021, it will shift to self-driving buses and urban logistics.

Not long ago, Baidu, SenseTime and Qingzhou Zhihang launched an autonomous bus road test in Yizhuang, Beijing. For a time, the attention of self-driving tracks such as minibuses, buses, and logistics vehicles has heated up. Due to the replicability of technology and project experience, products such as Robotaxi (self-driving taxi) and self-driving bus can be quickly adapted to applications, becoming a number of opportunities for overtaking in autonomous driving corners, in addition, the business model of self-driving bus toB is easier to achieve than Robotaxi's toC, making such enterprises the object of capital attention.

Completed a new round of financing of tens of millions of yuan

Founded in 2016, Lingjun Technology is an autonomous driving company, and the founding team comes from the core R&D department of Baidu Deep Learning Laboratory, Autonomous Driving Division, and Intelligent Driving Business Group. In terms of time, Lingjun Technology is earlier than the release time of Baidu Apollo.

On April 13, Lingjun Technology announced that it has completed a new round of financing, amounting to tens of millions of yuan, by a well-known logistics group strategic investment, Lingchuang Capital to participate in the investment, the old shareholder Zhen xin capital additional investment, this round of funds raised will be used for the large-scale expansion of the technical team and continue to empower partners in the urban intelligent transportation of autonomous passenger transport and freight commercialization process.

It is worth noting that this is the third financing that Lingjun Technology has received in one year. Beijing Business Daily reporter learned from relevant people of Lingjun Technology that in 2017, Lingjun Technology received angel round investment from Jiuhe Venture Capital, Xintian Venture Capital, Yihe Capital and other institutions. In April and November 2021, Lingjun Technology received tens of millions of yuan in financing, including Ganzhou Financial Holding Group and Ganzhou Economic Development Zone Industrial Development Investment Group, Horizon, Zhenxin Capital and the core team of Lingjun Technology.

According to IT orange data, in 2021, the domestic autonomous driving industry has completed a total of 13 financings, and the financing of Lingjun Technology is not remarkable in a number of financing cases, but like Lingjun Technology, there are not a few people who have made efforts in logistics and other tracks, and Xiaoma Zhixing and Wincher Technology are representatives.

Specific to Lingjun Technology, "Our autonomous driving products include both software products and hardware sets that match it, as well as pre-controller chips and related algorithms that can be pre-installed for autonomous driving." Product application scenarios can be roughly divided into four types: post-roll Robotaxi, mass production pre-installation, scene application, and small low-speed mobile robots," said Yang Wenli, founder and CEO of Lingjun Technology.

Shift from passenger cars to buses and city logistics

"From a technical point of view, automatic driving is mainly divided into lidar-based solutions and camera-based solutions, so whether it is Robotaxi, or autonomous driving minibuses, buses, logistics vehicles, etc., it is just the difference in application scenarios, specific scenarios, Robotaxi involves more complex scenarios, data, algorithms, higher costs, autonomous driving minibuses, buses, logistics vehicles are easier to commercialize", He Qi, a senior analyst in the automotive travel industry at Analysys, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter.

Talking about the difference between the technical routes of autonomous driving Robotaxi and self-driving minibuses and bus enterprises, Zhang Xiaorong, president of the DeepIn Science and Technology Research Institute, said bluntly, "The basic principles are the same. But different car companies design different autonomous driving models, and they use different data to train these models, thus creating differences in technical routes."

The reason why the difference between the two businesses is emphasized is because autonomous driving companies have different choices for the track. It is understood that at the beginning of the establishment of Lingjun Technology, it mainly focused on the field of passenger cars, and completed the strategic transformation in the second half of 2021, positioning itself in the intelligent transportation of smart cities, that is, urban passenger transportation and freight transport.

In addition to Lingjun Technology, Wenyuan Zhixing also set its sights on tracks outside robotaxi. At present, Wenyuan Zhixing's driverless minibus has carried out road testing and operation in Guangzhou, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Shenzhen and other cities. Since January this year, Wenyuan Zhixing has joined hands with Guangzhou Bus Group to open two self-driving minibus operation routes to the public free of charge on Guangzhou International Bio-Island. In terms of same-city freight, Wenyuan Zhixing, Jiangling Motors and Zhongtong Express carried out pilot tests and operations together.

Talking about the reasons why Lingjun Technology chose urban passenger transportation and freight, Yang Wenli told the Beijing Business Daily reporter, "The degree of technical reuse is higher, reaching more than 90%; the technology dimensionality reduction is simpler for Lingjun Technology; these two scenarios can be quickly commercialized, the park's unmanned minibus belongs to the closed scene, the intelligent network bus is in line with the national intelligent network strategy; the branch logistics line of the city is fixed; Lingjun Technology found that only these two scenes Are not established, the degree of technical reuse is high, the consumption of research and development funds is small, and the cash return is fast. And in line with the strategy of going back and forth under Lingjun Technology; it can truly serve the people's livelihood, liberate the labor force, and create social value; the industry ceiling is high, and the company has great development potential."

It will land in Suzhou and other cities

Commercialization is easier is also a point that He Qi emphasized, "At present, the enterprises in each autonomous driving scenario have their own advantages, from the trend point of view, the beginning of robotaxi enterprises, but the unmanned scene is difficult to land concretely, commercialization is difficult, so many companies have begun to focus on commercial vehicle scenarios that are easy to commercialize, such as trunk logistics, ports, mining areas and other closed driverless scenes, such enterprises are also the most active at present, the capital market attention is high."

At present, Lingjun Technology has landed cases, and its "Xiao ant residence" intelligent network bus has successfully carried out unmanned operation in the demonstration area of Ganzhou City.

Yang Wenli further introduced, Xiao Ant Ju "series of buses are divided into three product segments, the smallest is the park bus can be used for universities, parks, park scenes, the official website shows this intelligent network bus type belongs to the China Bus, large intelligent network bus product Lingjun technology is also there, Lingjun technology's full-stack intelligent network connection and automatic driving technology is universal. At present, the deepest bus cooperation is Xiamen Jinlong, which is currently the most reliable on the wire-controlled chassis; secondly, Dongfeng, Kaiwo, Shaanxi Automobile and so on also have cooperation.

In addition to Ganzhou, the next self-driving bus of Lingjun Technology will also land in Suzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Xi'an and other cities, and the autonomous driving road test licenses of these cities are being applied. However, due to the signing of a confidentiality agreement with the partner, Yang Wenli did not disclose the models planned to be launched in the field of urban logistics and the car companies cooperated.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Wei Wei