Alibaba leads $300m round for China's DeepRoute.ai

Jeneration Capital also took part as a new investor – others were not named – while the likes of RZ Capital, Yunqi Partners, and Glory Ventures re-upped.

In 2019, the company received seed funding from Yunqi and a $50 million pre-Series A led by RZ. GSR Capital, Yunqi, Ventech China, and Green Pine Capital Partners also took part in the latter round. It was reported in August that Alibaba had provided $200 million in Series A funding.

DeepRoute is the only autonomous driving company in China that has Alibaba as strategic investor, according to a statement.

Other members of the BAT are not prominent within the industry. Local leaders Pony.ai and WeRide – described as China’s Waymo equivalents – were both Baidu spinouts. Baidu has since repositioned itself as service provider to the entire industry, developing an open-source autonomous driving platform. Tencent Holdings is doing the same.

Founded in 2019, DeepRoute specializes in level four (L4) autonomous driving, which means the car is fully autonomous in certain environments, but it still needs a driver in the seat. Staffed by former employees of Ford Motor Company, Google, Intel Corporation, and Microsoft, it has twin headquarters in Shenzhen and Fremont, California.

The new funding will go towards R&D, expanding collaborations with automakers, and recruitment. DeepRoute’s long-term strategy includes developing medium-duty trucks. Near-term goals include growing the robotaxi fleet to more than 150 by the end of this year. Approximately 100 of these vehicles will be directly owned.

DeepRoute was the first company to receive a robotaxi permit for Shenzhen’s central business district, and it currently serves more than 100 pick-up and drop-off points. There is also a pilot project in Wuhan. Across the two cities, DeepRoute vehicles have traveled 1.2 million miles. A robotaxi pilot is expected to launch later this year in California.

The company is known for giving up the entire trunk space of its vehicle to customers, whereas other autonomous driving developers install computing units and cooling equipment in that space.

Speaking to AVCJ last year, Nianqiu Liu, a vice president at Deeproute, explained this was possible because other functions have been integrated to make the whole system smaller. Meanwhile, the computing platform operates with only 45 watts of power, which means there is no audible noise. “We pay attention to details that are critical for real passenger experience,” he said.

Jason Tan, a partner and CIO at Jeneration, said that the investment in DeepRoute reflects confidence in the company’s technology and management team.

“The self-driving technology market is highly competitive and features many exciting innovations. We believe DeepRoute.ai’s engineering team and proven record of success to date will enable it to continue to be a leading innovator, empowering more businesses and services in a variety of industries,” he said.

Pony.ai and WeRide have both closed funding rounds this year – the former securing a $100 million Series C extension, while the latter raised a $310 million Series B. They face a concerted challenge from local ride-hailing platform Didi, which claims to be the only company globally with over 100 billion kilometers of autonomous driving data. It raised a $300 million round in January.

Several other autonomous driving companies focus on driving services or algorithms rather than vehicles. The PE-backed contingent includes the likes of Momenta and CalmCar.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• autonomous driving
• automobiles
• Alibaba Group
• Jeneration Capital
• Growth capital
• Glory Ventures
• Yunqi Partners