China's Black Sesame completes Series C with $500m haul
Black Sesame Technologies, a China-based chipmaker specializing in autonomous driving applications, has closed a Series C extension led by SummitView Capital. This brings the size of the overall round to USD 500m.
Other investors in the extension include Industrial Bank, GF Xinde Investment Management, Hina Group, North Beta Capital, and Xingding Capital. The company did not specify individual amounts for the Series C and the extension.
In September 2021, Black Sesame raised several hundred million dollars through two funding rounds at a valuation of USD 2bn. These were described as a strategic round and a Series C, with the latter led by Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Fund. It represented a irst investment in the automotive chip field for smart electronics brand Xiaomi.
SummitView also took part in the Series C, as did FAW Group's FulScience Automotive Electronics, the investment arm of Shanghai-listed Wingtech Technology, FutureX Capital, Oriza Hua, Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, and Sunic Capital.
FAW, one of China's largest state-owned carmakers, is also a long-term partner of Black Sesame. In 2019, it collaborated with the start-up on autonomous vehicle chips and visual perception algorithms, with a view to deploying them in FAW vehicles.
Founded in 2016, Black Sesame has R&D centers in Shanghai and Silicon Valley. It focuses on high-performance, high computing power chips for autonomous driving platforms and intelligent vehicles.
In May, JAC Motors announced that several mass-production models under its Sihao passenger car brand would be equipped with Black Sesame’s Huashan-2 A1000 chips.
The A1000 series focuses on camera-based sensing and artificial intelligence-enabled computing for level-three autonomous driving systems. It is the first mass-produced domestic chip platform that complies with these regulations, where vehicles have conditional autonomy but human override is still required.
Black Sesame is simultaneously commercialising advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving perceptual system solutions with various partners. It has collaborated with the likes of FAW, Bosch, SAIC, Dongfeng Motor on ADAS.
Within the automotive space, Black Sesame expects intelligence, electrification, networking, and sharing to reshape the value chain. Cars will transform from traditional travel tools into mobile smart spaces. The hardware that underpins this transition is built on chips, which will become the new engines of the smart car era.
Black Sesame's Series B closed in 2019 on approximately USD 100m. It was led by Legend Capital, with participation from SK Hynix, the VC arm of China Merchants Group, Delta Capital, Fenghe Capital, and existing investor Northern Light Venture Capital.
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