Nio Capital, Eight Roads lead Series A for Innovusion

Innovusion's flagship product is the Cheetah system, which creates a map of the area around a car more than 200 meters away. The company claims the system captures more than twice as much detail as those of other providers while maintaining a high frame rate and low production cost.

With the new capital, Innovusion will expand its research and development team and manufacturing facilities to accelerate development of Cheetah, which is expected to enter mass production by the end of 2018. The company was founded in 2016 and began limited production of Cheetah earlier this year.

"When looking at the robo-taxi market and the amount of testing needed, we see a strong immediate need for high-performance Lidar sensors," said Ian Zhu, a managing partner at NIO Capital, in a statement. "As for the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] market, we see automakers putting more and more efforts on testing and integrating sensors for autonomous driving. We strongly believe Innovusion will lead and greatly benefit from these booming markets."

NIO Capital was established last year by NIO, which raised $1 billion in its US IPO earlier this year. The firm has a RMB10 billion ($1.4 billion) fund for investments in electric vehicle supply chain companies, and has backed the likes of Momenta, a Chinese developer of software for on-board sensors in autonomous vehicles, and ride-hailing app Shouqi.

Autonomous driving, which incorporates a wide range of technologies including software, processors, sensors, and communication equipment, is an increasingly popular investment segment in Asia as GPs see multiple start-ups emerging to which they can provide capital. However, the industry faces challenges such as regulatory hurdles, safety concerns, and cultural barriers to adoption.

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