China LiDAR specialist Hesai closes $300m Series D

This new funding will be used to support the mass production of hybrid solid-state LiDAR. LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, uses light to measure the distance of obstacles in autonomous driving. Hesai is also building an intelligent manufacturing center and conducting R&D on automotive-grade high-performance LiDAR chips.

The company raised a $173 million Series C round led by Germany's Bosch Group and existing investor Lightspeed China Partners in January 2020. Hesai applied to list on Shanghai's Star Market two months later but withdrew the application earlier this year. This followed a patent dispute with a US peer that resulted in Hesai agreeing to pay license fees.

Hesai was founded in Silicon Valley in 2013 but relocated to Shanghai the following year. It employs 500 people across two commercialization centers and two manufacturing centers in China and the US. Customers include Bosch, Lyft, Nuro, and TuSimple.

Prior to Series C, Hesai the company over $150 million from investors such as Baidu and ZhenFund. Pagoda Investment led a RMB110 million ($16 million) Series A in 2017.

"As the core sensor in autonomous driving, LiDAR directly affects the development speed and sophistication of the autonomous driving industry. At the same time, we see that downstream application scenarios for LiDAR are becoming more abundant - not only automobiles but also robots and manufacturing," said Liming Huang, a partner at GL.

Other LiDAR technology companies that have received private equity funding include Australia's Baraja, China's RoboSense, and China and US-based Innovusion, which is best known as a supplier to Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Nio.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• GL Ventures
• automobiles
• Growth capital
• autonomous driving