On May 31, General Motors announced that its autonomous driving business unit has received a US$2.25 billion investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund, which is the largest investment in the autonomous driving industry so far.
In the past two years, large and small financing mergers and acquisitions have occurred almost every day, whether it is for autonomous driving system solutions, or for high-precision maps, lidar and other core technologies for autonomous driving.
The tuyere of autonomous driving is bringing about an entrepreneurial boom. In China, self-driving entrepreneurial teams are gaining the favor of capital, and the amount of financing is also expanding. Half a month ago, Shenzhen Xingyu Technology announced that it had completed a pre-A round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan, and will launch service solutions such as autonomous driving; and just a month ago, Guangzhou Jingchi Technology and Shenzhen Xingxing Technology received A Among the rounds of financing, Xingxing Technology’s financing amounted to US$128 million, which is currently the highest financing announced by a domestic start-up autonomous driving company.
With the promulgation of related policies for the development of intelligent networks, and the guidance of Guangzhou and Shenzhen’s policies on talent introduction, in the past two years, many autonomous driving startups have been born in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, involving autonomous driving perception, decision-making, and execution. The entire industrial chain of upstream and downstream.
A large number of startups appeared
In general, there are three main directions for entrepreneurship in the field of autonomous driving: one is to develop system solutions for high-level autonomous driving; the second is to focus on core components of autonomous driving, such as lidar, sensors, etc.; and the third is artificial intelligence-related technologies Application in smart cars.
Guangzhou-based Jingchi Technology, Xiaoma Zhixing (pony.ai), and Shenzhen-based Roadstar.ai (Roadstar.ai). These three companies have been established for less than two years, but they have all been in the development of L4 autonomous driving. A breakthrough has been made.
Jingchi and Xiaoma Zhixing were not in Guangzhou at the beginning of their establishment, but they chose to move their global headquarters to Guangzhou successively, which has nothing to do with the local government's active promotion of relevant policies and encouragement of autonomous driving road tests.
On October 16 last year, the Guangzhou Nansha Development Zone Management Committee and Beijing Xiaoma Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd. signed a contract to set up an autonomous driving R&D center and headquarters base in Nansha, Guangzhou.
Previously, the two companies had conducted road tests in California, and now they have carried out road tests of unmanned vehicles in designated areas in Guangzhou under the permission of the government, which will provide strong support for their localized research and development.
"In December last year, we established the China headquarters in Guangzhou and officially started the road test. It has been about 6 months so far. Our road test fleet in Nansha District, Guangzhou has carried out normal operation. In February this year, we signed a framework agreement with GAC. And decided to further cooperate to establish a joint venture in the future. In May of this year, we established an artificial intelligence research institute in Guangzhou." On June 21, Zhang Ning, technical director of Xiaoma Zhixing, told 21st Century Business Herald reporter.
On June 21st, Zhou Guang, the co-founder of Xingxing Technology, revealed to the 21st Century Business Herald that Xingxing Technology has carried out road tests in Shenzhen under the permission of relevant departments.
Focusing on key technologies such as sensors and high-precision maps have become a major breakthrough for autonomous driving. If Jingchi, Xiaoma Zhixing, and Xingxing Technology want to benchmark and compete with Waymo, these sensor startups aspire to become "China's Mobileye."
In Shenzhen, startup companies such as Sagitar Juchuang and Minieye, which focus on sensor R&D, hope to break foreign monopolies and gain a place in the market by mastering their own technology.
Sagitar focuses on the autonomous driving lidar environment perception solution, which is an accurate and reliable lidar three-dimensional space perception solution for the mass production of autonomous driving. "Sagitar Juchuang's new generation of MEMS solid-state lidar has been opened to some strategic partners. At the same time, we also adapt the self-developed perception algorithm for lidar to provide a complete lidar sensing system solution for autonomous driving." June On the 21st, Qiu Chunchao, chief operating officer of Sagitar, said in an interview with a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald.
"Although autonomous driving is popular in the capital market, what MINIEYE has to do is to provide a better perception module for autonomous driving. It is currently developing a perception solution that integrates with more sensors including LiDAR, ultrasound, and thermal imaging. It may be in the future. It will be achieved within 1-2 years." On May 30, MINIEYE CEO Liu Guoqing said in an interview with a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald.
According to Liu Guoqing, MINIEYE is cooperating with the Singapore-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SMART) in autopilot-related cooperation and is expected to be commercialized in 2019.
Beware of investment blur
Among the autonomous driving startup teams in the Greater Bay Area, the three L4 autonomous driving startups currently have the most generous financing. In January of this year, Xiaoma Zhixing received US$112 million in Series A financing; in May this year, Xingxing Technology received US$128 million in Series A financing; Jingchi Technology completed a US$52 million Pre-A as early as September last year. Round of financing, and the A round of financing started in May of this year.
Among the smart cooperative car partners in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, there are investment and financing institutions such as Ping An Ventures, Guohong Jiaxin Capital, Lihe Capital, and Cornerstone Capital. An investor told a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald that there are two main criteria for choosing to invest in autonomous driving-related startups: the founding team should have experience in autonomous driving research and development in Silicon Valley, and have an international perspective; whether they have preliminarily formed technologies And products.
Jingchi, Xiaoma Zhixing and Xingxing Technology are favored by capital. The main members of the founding team have previously held important positions in Baidu's autonomous driving department and conducted autonomous driving research and development in Silicon Valley.
However, in the early stages of the development of the autonomous driving industry, investment has certain risks. An investor told the 21st Century Business Herald that companies in the field of autonomous driving have emerged in batches. At this stage, it is difficult to judge whether a company is a target for returns.
Zhang Yongwei, secretary-general and chief expert of the China Electric Vehicles Association, said: “Many manufacturers have set a timetable, and some companies say it is very different from what they do. In particular, they regard things that can only be achieved in a long time in the future and treat them now What can be done. This has caused a blurring of the entire industry, which can easily create an illusion for the industry, consumers, and the investment community."
In Zhang Yongwei's view, investing in the autonomous driving industry especially needs to prevent the emergence of investment blur and low-level solidification problems that are most likely to occur in emerging industries in the early stages of development.
"I'm afraid that these technologies that are not yet able to truly reflect intelligentization will be solidified prematurely, and large-scale investment will be formed around some unreal technologies, and some precipitated production capacity will be formed. If these early low-level solidification volumes are large It is likely to become an obstacle to the next stage of innovation." Zhang Yongwei said.
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