"China's unmanned car upstart has secretly launched an IPO!"
This is the new progress just exposed by foreign media Bloomberg, and this unmanned car upstart refers to WeRide Zhixing -
Headquartered in Guangzhou, it is the first batch of autonomous driving star unicorns to launch Robotaxi operations in China, has the largest autonomous driving fleet and landing product line matrix, has previously attracted nearly US$1.5 billion in gold, and the latest valuation exceeds US$4.4 billion.
And at a more popular level, it is still a new company for stand-up comedian "Workshop Flowers" Zhao Xiaohui to abandon her birthday and turn positive for less than half a year.
In fact, as early as August last year, WeRide exposed the relevant trends of the listing, but the timing of all aspects at that time seemed unclear.
Now, with the opening of a new warm current of Chinese concept stocks going public in the United States, the successful IPO of smart car companies including Hesai, and the listing of a large number of companies such as Lotus and Zeekrypton, the time for WeRide to land on NASDAQ looks more mature.
According to the latest revelations, WeYuan plans to raise $500 million, and WeRide has made data security guarantees through Apple's "cloud Guizhou" approach.
For the autonomous driving industry, the IPO progress of WeRide will have obvious signposting, and once the successful listing in the United States is successfully completed, it will also bring a new entrance and flow of capital to the entire autonomous driving industry with heavy capital investment.
Of course, for individuals concerned by public opinion, Zhao Xiaohui does have a good vision, and she is indeed much more down-to-earth than joining Li Sheng's Xiaoguo culture. (Manual dog head)
In addition, according to the smart car reference, Li Xuan, vice president who joined SenseTime in 2020, was responsible for the promotion of investment, financing and listing-related matters within WeRide, and it was also her long-sleeved dance in investment and financing, which successfully helped WeRide successfully complete multiple rounds of counter-market financing from the 2019 capital winter.
Since 2020, WeRide has gradually overcome the adversity, WeRide has completed the current technology and product model, forming a general autonomous driving technology landing model with 1 platform, 2 scenarios and 5 products.
The closed-loop of technological model innovation and phased business model innovation have been completed, and it is indeed time to take off with greater leverage.
WeRide's Know-It-Actions model
Founded in 2017, WeRide is a technology company aiming at Level 4 autonomous driving.
This pattern has been formed since then:
One platform: WeRide One, a general technology platform for autonomous driving.
Two major scenarios: passenger travel and freight commercialization.
5 products: Robotaxi, Mini Robobus, Robovan, Robovan, Advanced Driving Solution.
The core of this is WeRide One, a general technology platform for autonomous driving.
The platform can be torn down from software, hardware, cloud platforms, compute units, and operating systems.
Software, the core is the integration of AI and autonomous driving algorithms, and it is also the origin of WeRide's knowledge, including algorithmic capabilities in positioning, perception, prediction and planning control.
Hardware refers specifically to sensors, and because WeRide uses multi-sensor redundant routes, lidar, cameras, millimeter-wave radar and GPS are all important components.
In general, software and hardware constitute the core capabilities of autonomous bicycle intelligence.
But for this core capability to accumulate into barriers and moats, the architecture associated with the cloud platform is quite important.
Typically, simulation, data analysis, remote control, and cloud integrated development are the core modules of the autonomous driving cloud platform.
In particular, the ability of data and simulation directly determines the speed of evolution and iteration of autonomous driving technology.
Whoever gets the data wins the world.
This is also the fundamental reason why Tesla is riding the dust in the iterative evolution of autonomous driving.
For Wenyuan, after the software architecture and hardware sensor solutions are determined, the closed-loop of the autonomous driving technology system is completed through drive test and data training, iteration, and redeployment.
It is worth noting that before April 2022, the "input" and "output" of WeRide's autonomous driving system focused on urban scenarios.
Therefore, whether it is self-driving taxis, self-driving minibuses, self-driving freight vehicles Robovan, autonomous sanitation vehicles, or the distinction between passenger and freight commercial use, they are all carried out in the big scene of urban ODD.
The benefits are obvious, the data type and scene capability migration are unified, and the city fence is not out.
However, starting from entering mass production of autonomous driving and reducing the dimension of L4 capabilities to high-end intelligent driving, the versatility of this technology platform has also shown a new side.
WeRide also admitted that there are further generalization upgrades in modules.
For example, taking software algorithms as an example, WeRide One has been universally upgraded for several core modules of autonomous driving, such as perception, prediction, planning control, and map positioning.
On the one hand, the core functions of L4 autonomous driving technology are generalized and refined, such as the perception module using multi-sensor fusion + multi-channel redundancy, the planning and control module that introduces the high-order game mechanism, and the high-precision positioning module with an error of less than 2 cm.
This is also Wen Yuan's answer from a technical point of view "why can you do a good job in high-end intelligent driving".
In short, this set of autonomous driving general technology platform named WeRide One is not only the architectural result of WeRide's focus on modularity and highly refined from the beginning, but also shows the diversity and complexity of the autonomous driving technology stack...
Implicit in a new trend - after the opportunity of the universal platform, there may be vertical opportunities in every segment.
In the promotion of WeRide, the computing scheme and operating system are relatively low-key for the time being.
But on the whole, WeRide did achieve the landing of 2 major scenarios and launched 5 major products through a platform-based technology system.
In the past five years, through these products and landing, more than 12 million kilometers of autonomous driving have been achieved, and 25 cities around the world have been put on the road... This closed loop from technology, products to data is forming a moat for WeRide.
In the next race, the key indicators seem to have been clear -
Larger scale landing, larger scale data, and then iterating on products and technology systems with better experience.
With the closed-loop realization of the technical system, the flywheel of the business model of WeRide has also begun.
From the current point of view, it can be viewed from two aspects:
Capacity supply, and intelligent driving experience.
Capacity supply, mainly from taxi banks, minibuses and other travel aspects and urban freight and cleaning, with AI drivers to achieve supply-side innovation, there are alternatives, more incremental, but from the efficiency point of view is a qualitative change, the process is similar to the car-to-carriage revolution.
Intelligent driving experience is in the intelligent process of automobiles, especially private cars, can provide a better driving experience, although the amount changes, but this amount is very considerable.
Therefore, even relying on these two aspects, WeRide's business model can initially achieve rolling accumulation, showing the possibility and feasibility of large-scale profit.
Previous third-party reports estimated that the size of China's unmanned driving market in 2022 will exceed 14 billion yuan; By 2030, the revenue generated by new car sales and application services related to autonomous driving will exceed 4.3 trillion yuan.
And it has been recognized that China will be the largest market for autonomous driving-related products and applications.
Wen Yuan knows how to do this
Of course, this kind of business prospect is naturally needless to say for the investors of WeRide.
WeRide was founded on April 3, 2017 and registered in Silicon Valley.
One month later, it was officially announced that the first driverless road test on closed roads had been completed.
In one month, it obtained the California DMV road test license and announced the completion of the first open road driverless road test.
Less than half a year after its establishment, it was able to complete the commuter road test in the sea of cars during peak hours in Silicon Valley.
Investment progress also followed, angel round received 30 million US dollars of angel investment such as Huachuang Capital, and later AI bull Shen Xiangyang was also exposed as one of the angels.
In December 2017, it completed a $52 million pre-A financing round, with Qiming Ventures, Innovation Factory and NVIDIA and other related investors entering.
In October 2018, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance led the Series A round, the amount was not disclosed, but it was said to be hundreds of millions of dollars, which was also the first time that WeRide completed an alliance with an OEM factory.
In January 2019, SenseTime and ABCI followed up with Wenyuan's Series A series with tens of millions of dollars.
Starting from the B round, WeRide Zhixing really showed greater gold-absorbing power.
In December 2020, after the capital winter, WeRide received US$310 million from Yutong Bus and was promoted to unicorn.
Five months later, another $310 million was received, with a post-investment valuation of $3.3 billion.
Later, in three years this year, WeRide further completed a financing of 400 million US dollars, with a post-investment valuation of 4.4 billion US dollars, and Tier 1 giant Bosch entered the market, and Wen Yuan also opened a commercial monetization model on the route of mass production autonomous driving.
So far, WeRide has completed 7 rounds of financing in 5 years, attracting nearly 1.5 billion US dollars, and is China's most attractive and valuable autonomous driving startup star.
But those familiar with Wen Yuan's road may also know that Wen Yuan has a bright start, but it has also experienced an almost fatal turbulent trough, coupled with the cold capital environment around 2019, and it was difficult for a while.
But Wen Yuan's luck lies in the fact that his insistence on technology has not changed, his belief in automatic driving has not wavered, and CEO Han Xu has stabilized his position in adversity, forming a core management team including CTO Li Yan, COO Zhang Li, and Finance VP Li Xuan, and internal technology gods including genius programmer Chen Shixi have also continuously created value that changes the world.
In the field of autonomous driving, Han Xu is a professor, scientist, and straightforward poet, so when he took over as CEO from CTO in the turmoil, it was not without controversy inside and outside.
It's just that it is still tenacious, and Han Xu has given the best response and proof with results and time.
Of course, if it comes to Wen Yuan's internal vision, popular stand-up comedian Zhao Xiaohui may be the best one, after all, in the eyes of the outside world, she gave up Li Sheng's entertainment star olive branch, hoping to create value through high-tech industry.
And now, WeRide Zhixing is indeed a good choice.
— End —
【Smart Car Reference】Original content, without the authorization of the account, is prohibited to be reproduced at will.