Top Ten Investment and Financing Events of China Smart Net Alliance Automotive in 2017

With the continuous development of society, the city’s transportation resources are increasingly strained, and the progress of intelligent network-connected technologies covering communication and Internet of Things technology provides good conditions for the development of urban transportation. Artificial intelligence, big data, Internet of things, and virtual reality The latest technologies such as augmented reality are accelerating the transformation and integration of the automotive industry, sharing travel as a new mobile travel mode, and increasingly being recognized by consumers. On January 5, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Intelligent Automobile Innovation and Development Strategy (Draft for Soliciting Opinions)", which proposes to build a smart car powerhouse. The goal is to reach 50% of the proportion of new smart car vehicles by 2020, and realize the realization of medium and high-level smart cars. With market application, the demonstration operation in key regions has achieved results.

The attention of policy level has promoted the upsurge of the development of smart cars. Smart cars will become the largest structural opportunity in the world in the next decade. It is also a historic opportunity for China’s auto industry. Autopilot and SmartNet are almost included in all current host companies. The blueprint for the future has become one of the most important core technology trends in the global automotive industry, especially in China. Intelligent grid-linked vehicles have also become a popular source of capital.

Recently, the top ten investment and financing events of China Intelligent Network Alliance Automotive in 2017 were announced at the China Automotive Industry Trends and Investment Summit. The specific list is as follows:

1. Weilai continuously completed a huge amount of financing (1.6 billion US dollars), the new car ES8 began mass production this year

Among the many new vehicle manufacturers, Weilai has more than US$1.6 billion in financing, and there are as many as 56 investors behind it, including Li Bin, Chairman and CEO of Easycar, Li Xiang, founder of Car Home, and Liu Qiangdong, Chairman of Jingdong. Tencent, Gaochun Capital and Shunwei Capital. Since its establishment, Weilai has successively won investments from dozens of well-known institutions such as Temasek, Baidu Capital, Sequoia, Hopu, Lenovo Group, Huaping, TPG, GIC, IDG, and Pleasant Capital. Up to now, the company’s valuation has exceeded US$20 billion.

Weilai is one of the largest venture capitalists in the new-build car industry, and it is also another typical case in which the capital is gambling on the future of the industry. Weilai Company will continue to expand financing to support its mass production and infrastructure construction work.

2. BAT has a full range of unmanned areas: Baidu opens its Apollo platform; Tencent's AI in car system launches; Zebra Auto introduces new shareholders, diluting Ali and SAIC color, etc.

Lu Qi, President and Chief Operating Officer of Baidu Group, officially released an automated driving platform opening program called “Apollo” during the April 2017 Shanghai International Auto Show. The platform provides obstacle perception, decision planning, high-precision maps, etc. Assisted driving functions are designed to assist the automotive industry and the auto-piloting field in combination with vehicles and hardware systems to quickly build their own autopilot systems. Apollo and Golden Dragon Bus will build Apollon, the first domestic unmanned microcirculator, and will be mass-produced in 2018.

Tencent also launched the intelligent car linkage operating system AI in Car, relying on the system, Guangzhou Automobile's future products will realize intelligent voice interaction, smart travel and other services, also jointly released the iSPACE electric concept car iSPACE, GAC, is also expected to mass production time is also 2018 .

As early as July 2016, the Roewe RX5, the world's first Internet car, which was jointly developed by Alibaba and SAIC, is powered by YunOS for Car, a smart car operating system that provides intelligent navigation, voice operation, and remote control. On October 13, 2017, at the 2017 Yunxi Conference in Hangzhou, Shenlong Automobile Co., Ltd. and Alibaba Group's new operating system brand AliOS and Zebra Network Technology Co., Ltd. reached a strategic cooperation on the future of automobile intelligence, and will be in 2018. Launched an Internet car equipped with the AliOS system. It is understood that Shenlong Motor Company's first Internet car will be an SUV model.

3. Domestic capital continues to acquire overseas driverless technology companies: Optimus Ride received 18 million US dollars in Series A financing; Alibaba invested in Swiss HUD company Wayray et al.

On November 2, 2017, Optimus Ride, an American autopilot startup, announced that it has received a round of financing totaling US$18 million, led by investment firm Greycroft Partners. This financing will help Optimus further expand its fleet size. , and strategically introduce more talents. Optimus Ride is a start-up company in Boston, USA. It was originally spun off from the MIT internal research team and focused on the development of safe, sustainable autonomous driving technology and travel programs. At present, the company is developing a Level 4 (SAE) level autopilot system for electric vehicle fleets.

After cooperating with SAIC Group to release four Internet vehicles in succession, Alibaba has invested in a Swiss company WayRay that designs and manufactures vehicle head-up displays (HUDs) with an investment of US$18 million. Similar to a conventional head-up display (HUD), the on-board product of the WayRay uses a holographic optical element to project the vehicle driving data and traffic warning information in the navigation system onto the front windshield, thereby reducing the driver's distraction. After accepting Alibaba's investment, WayRay will cooperate with Ali and SAIC Group's Zebra Zhixing to develop a new car navigation and infotainment system, and also use marketing concepts such as holographic augmented reality (AR).

4. Nvidia Participates in Automated Commercial Vehicle Manufacturer Tucson's Future B+ and C Round Fifty Five Million U.S. Financing

Following the announcement of B round financing from Sina, Zhiping Capital, and Nvidia in early August 2017, the unmanned cargo truck technology company Tucson will announce again in November that it has completed a C round of US$55 million in financing, which is funded by the compound capital. Leading investment, Sina, Zhiping capital and investment. Tuomo future CEO Chen Mo said that this round of financing will be used for further research and development and drive test.

Tucson is an artificial intelligence company focused on R&D and application of unmanned cargo trucks. It has R&D centers in China and the United States. In September 2016, Tucson will set 10 new world records in the global automatic driving algorithm evaluation data set KITTI and Cityscapes. In June 2017, Tucson will obtain a road test license in California, and then complete an L4-level unmanned cross-country governor drive test from California to Pima County, Arizona. In the meantime, Tucson’s future L4-class unmanned trucks are China began road testing and currently completes mileage testing for nearly 10,000 kilometers of roads. It has been publicly demonstrated in Shanghai in early November.

This time, Nvidia’s driverless technology has entered the commercial vehicle market. The industry speculates whether the company is setting up an “infield” autonomous driving system.

5. Deep learning smart chip developer Cambrian Alibaba, Lenovo and other giants 100 million A round of financing

In August 2017, Cambrian Technology completed a round of US$100 million round A financing, which was jointly invested by SDIC Ventures, Alibaba Ventures, Lenovo Ventures, Guoke Investment, Zhongke Turing, Yuanyu Origin, and Yongsheng Investment. After this round of financing, the company became one of the "unicorns".

The Cambrian is the world's first successful AI chip company with mature products. It has two product lines: terminal AI processor IP and cloud high-performance AI chips. The Cambrian 1A processor (Cambricon-1A), released in 2016, is the world's first commercially available deep learning processor. It was also selected as one of the fifteen “World Internet Leading Scientific Achievements” by the Third World Internet Conference (Wuzhen). ".

The Cambrian team came from the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The latter is China's first national academic institution that specializes in the comprehensive research of computer science and technology. A group of high-tech companies such as Lenovo and Shuguang were born from this institution. At present, it is also an important shareholder of the Cambrian Technology and a long-term partner for production, research and development.

Investing in the Chinese AI chip makers of the benchmark Ying Wei Da helped the Cambrian build its own patent barriers.

6. Autopilot Radar R & D Co., Ltd. Sailing Technology completed 110 million yuan A round of financing

In May 2017, China Sailing Technology Co., Ltd. announced that it had completed a round of RMB 110 million A round of financing, and had invested in Gate Ventures, Creative Ventures and Yuanzhan Capital.

Hao Sai Technology was established in San Jose, Silicon Valley, USA in 2013 and settled in Shanghai in 2014. He started to engage in laser gas and natural gas telemetry systems and later turned to research and development of autopilot lidar. The newly released 40-wire hybrid solid-state lidar for autopilot, the Pandar40.

This is also the largest investment in the subdivision field. It is expected that domestic companies will be able to change the monopoly of laser radars by foreign companies.

7. SAIC and Wuhan Jingting, a high-precision map service provider, signed a strategic investment cooperation agreement

In September 2017, Shanghai Automotive Group Co., Ltd. and Wuhan KOTEI Information Technology Co., Ltd. jointly signed an agreement. Both parties will use KOTEI Information and its China National Marine Data Technology Co., Ltd. as the cooperation platform to accelerate the smart driving of high-precision maps. The business development and capacity building in the field will jointly promote the industrialization of smart driving technology in China.

The goal of both parties is to develop high-precision maps for L4 level autopilot. Different levels of automatic driving have different requirements for the accuracy of high-precision maps, data content, etc., but for the specific application, what kind of high-precision maps, what precision high-precision maps are needed, the industry has not been available for reference The standards also differ between different map providers. Therefore, the primary task of both parties will be to define specific standards for the L4 level of high-precision maps.

High-precision maps are the key technologies for smart driving. They are high-resolution, super-maps that can update data in real time. They are not only a part of the perception system, but also an important software module in the decision-making system to serve the intelligent driving decision controller. It is an important part of decision-making. It can know location information in advance, accurately plan driving routes, provide centimeter-accurate three-dimensional geometric information and attributes for each lane, and can collect feedback data in a place that cannot be monitored by the camera or radar; it can also accurately identify traffic lights, bridges and tunnels. Various traffic conditions such as crosswalks are marked so that accurate decisions can be made in advance.

This cooperation develops high-precision maps around the L4 level, focusing on forward-looking technological breakthroughs such as automatic driving and big data platforms. At this point, all six mapping licenses for high-precision navigation maps in China are "famous."

8. Pioneer Technologies, a driverless technology company, completed a large number of rounds of financing but was sued by Baidu for intellectual property rights.

After Google accused the original Google software engineer hired by Uber to steal autopilot technical documents in early 2017, Baidu’s dispute with Jingzhi staged a Chinese version of Google’s and Uber’s intellectual property rights war, sparking industry’s unmanned intellectual property rights. attention.

Jing Chi Technology was officially founded in April 2017 in the Silicon Valley of the United States. The founder of the company is Wang Jin, former general manager of Baidu’s former Auto Drive Division. On May 12, Jing Chi completed the first closed road driverless driving test. June 18, California DMV road test license. On June 24, the first open road driverless drive test was completed. On September 8, commuting road tests were completed in the car sea at the peak of Silicon Valley. On September 26, it announced the completion of an angel round of 52 million US dollars in financing.

However, Wang Jin’s former owner, Baidu, sued Wang Jing and the US-based King Chi Company on the grounds of violating trade secrets on December 22 to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court. In this case, Baidu requested the court to order that the two defendants immediately stop violating Baidu’s trade secrets, including not only stopping the use of the trade secret to engage in autopilot-related businesses that compete with Baidu, but also ordering the two defendants to jointly compensate for their economic losses and A reasonable expenditure of 50 million yuan, at the same time the two defendants publicly announced the elimination of the impact, and bear all the costs of litigation.

Wang Jin gave no response to Baidu’s lawsuit in the first instance, and Jing Chi’s lawyers will respond to the factual and legal aspects. In addition, Wang Jin revealed that King Chi Chief will also move back to China, and will demonstrate King Chi’s technical strength in China within two weeks. The case has now been accepted by the Beijing Intellectual Property Court.

9. Shandong high-speed strategic transformation layout networking, 47 million yuan investment in peacekeeping

Shandong Expressway has invested RMB 47 million through its investment fund and officially completed the investment in Shandong Saiwei Anxun Information Technology Co., Ltd., which is the first domestic car networking system manufacturer, and holds 47% of the shares in the latter. This is the layout of Shandong Expressway. Car networking and building an intelligent transportation industry is an important step.

Shandong Saiwei's shares held by Shandong Highspeed have the patent of China's only mobile multi-point live broadcast platform technology. Soooner's car networking cloud platform is used as the background technical support, and Smart Transportation APP “Road Dad” and vehicle-mounted intelligent hardware are launched. Bao" and a series of products.

It is understood that with the help of the information storage and processing functions of the car network, the freeway operation unit can better grasp the dynamics of the vehicle and improve the public travel service system. At the same time, it helps the driver to understand the road traffic conditions in real time, choose a more convenient travel route, prevent traffic jams, and improve the traffic capacity of the expressway. Shandong Expressway is using its own highways and infrastructure to take the lead in deploying the intelligent transportation industry.

10. Tencent acquires 5% stake in Tesla and becomes its fifth largest shareholder

On March 17, 2017, according to Tesla documents, Tencent acquired 8.167 million shares of Tesla in the open market through its Yellow River Investment for US$1.778 billion, accounting for 5% of the shares. Tencent confirmed the news on the evening of March 28. Tencent stated that because its shares are "passive equity," it does not own Tesla's board of directors and it will not affect Tesla's decision.

The Tesla development and financial reports in the past two years show that it has been in financial tension to support the volume production of the Model 3 and to pay for other expenses. At the beginning of March 2017, Tesla raised US$1.4 billion to support volume production of Model 3 and pay for other expenses. At this time, Tencent’s capital contribution to Tesla not only solved the urgent financial problems, but also facilitated the guidance of Tesla. Its layout in the Chinese market.

Tencent is more optimistic about Tesla's potential in the Chinese market. Tencent said that Tesla's sustainable energy production such as electric vehicles and unmanned vehicles is a global leader, and Tencent itself has also been committed to promoting ecological win-win results. This will result in a win-win situation.