Pagoda leads Series A for China smart sensing player

Grains Valley Venture Capital, Jiangmen Venture Capital, and LightHouse Capital Management also participated in the round.

Hesai was founded in Silicon Valley in 2013 but relocated to Shanghai in the following year. The company has a team of 50 people from top international and domestic universities, such as Stanford University and Tsinghua University, as well as technology firms including Apple, Carl Zeiss, Western Digital, and Tektronix.

The company's smart sensing technology is intended for use in autonomous cars and natural gas leak detection systems. It launched the world's first drone-mounted natural gas surveillance system specifically designed for high-rise buildings and recently unveiled its latest light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor for autonomous driving, which uses a laser to measure distances of up to 150 meters.

Hesai has worked with a number of autonomous car makers and technology developers including Baidu, electric vehicle start-up Nio and self-driving tech firm UiSee to test its technology.

"The autonomous driving industry is set to boom. Many ecosystems around this theme are in the development stage. It is a professional industry with high entry barriers, and only companies with the capability to continuously develop high-quality products can survive. From Hesai's early stage technology and products, we can see they have the potential to be one of the leaders in the future," Pagoda Investment said in a statement.

With the new funding, the company will accelerate mass production of the LiDAR sensor, and also develop a new generation of sensor products that can scan longer distances with greater reliability and at lower cost.

Beijing-based Pagoda pursues growth capital and buy-out strategies, with a focus on the consumer sector across technology, retail and services, and healthcare. It invests in Chinese companies and overseas firms with a view to benefiting from China's growing consumer market.

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• Topics
• Greater China
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• Early-stage
• China
• TMT
• Venture