Chinese autonomous driving start-up gets $128m Series A
Roadstar.ai, a Chinese start-up that specializes in autonomous driving technology, has received $128 million in Series A funding led by Shenzhen Capital Group and Wu Capital.
Existing investors Yunqi Partners, CMB International Capital, and Vision Plus Capital also took part in the round. It is said to be the largest capital raise by a Chinese autonomous driving company, surpassing the $112 million Series A secured by Pony.ai earlier this year. That investment was led by Morningside Ventures and Legend Capital.
According to AVCJ Research, Roadstar.ai – which is also known as Xingxing Technology – previously raised seed funding from Yunqi, Glory Ventures, Shenzhen Green Pine Capital, and Ventech China in June 2017. That round came one month after the business was established.
The three founders are engineers who previously worked on autonomous driving projects at Google, Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, and Baidu. They have developed technologies that integrate sensors such as LiDAR and cameras for level-four autonomous driving technology, where the system is responsible for controlling the vehicle and monitoring the driving environment and there is no human intervention – but vehicles are set up so they can be manually driven if necessary.
In the past year, Roadstar.ai has opened R&D centers in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen and conducted open road tests in the US and China, local media reported. It also exhibited a prototype driverless car at consumer electronics trade show CES in January.
Pony.ai, whose founders have similar backgrounds to their Roadstar.ai counterparts, is also working on level-four technology and has pilot cars on the road in the US and China. The company said its latest funding round would go towards launching a fleet of autonomous vehicles in Guangzhou.
A third Chinse autonomous driving start-up, JingChi, received a $54 million pre-Series A round last October from Qiming Venture Partners and Nvidia GPU Ventures. The company is based in California but has a strong focus on China, with plans to deploy test cars in Anqing, capital of Anhui province. Like Roadstar.ai and Pony.ai, it is working towards the launch of robotaxi services.
More on Greater China
Latest News
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...
Singapore fintech start-up LXA gets $10m seed round
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has led a USD 10m seed round for Singapore’s LXA, a financial technology start-up launched by a former Asia senior executive at The Blackstone Group.
India's InCred announces $60m round, claims unicorn status
Indian non-bank lender InCred Financial Services said it has received INR 5bn (USD 60m) at a valuation of at least USD 1bn from unnamed investors including “a global private equity fund.”
Insight leads $50m round for Australia's Roller
Insight Partners has led a USD 50m round for Australia’s Roller, a venue management software provider specializing in family fun parks.