Qiming leads $52m round for China’s JingChi

JingChi will use the new funding to scale up its R&D teams in China and the US, with a view to accelerating the development of a fully level four autonomous driving car – which means the car is fully self-driving in certain environments but it still needs a driver in the seat – in China by the end of this year.

The company was established in April this year by Tony Han and Jing Wang, who previously worked at Baidu’s autonomous driving unit. It has already completed autonomous driving tests in a closed venue and obtained a license to test its vehicles on California's public roads.

Subsequent to that, JingChi signed an agreement with Anqing in Anhui province that will see 50 self-driving cars on the streets as early as the end of this year. By 2018, the company plans to have hundreds of autonomous cars - known as Robotaxis - providing Uber-like ride-hailing services in the city.   

JingChi has a supply arrangement with Nvidia, which provides graphics processing units (GPUs) and computing systems for self-driving cars.

“We are creating an innovative mobility ecosystem to transform every single trip to be safer, more efficient, more cost-effective and more leisurely,” Wang said in a statement. “We are determined to bring fully autonomous vehicles to China and become one of the first companies that apply autonomous driving technologies at scale in 2020.”

Self-driving technology is still nascent and no start-up has yet addressed every facet of the market. China-based smart electric car maker Nio - formerly known as NextEV - raised $600 million in a Series C round in March, led by Baidu Capital and Tencent Holdings. It plans to launch an autonomous electric vehicle by 2020.

Momenta and Hesai, which are both focused on developing driverless car software technology, have also received funding from VC and strategic investors over the past six months. 

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• Topics
• Greater China
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• Qiming Venture Partners
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