Backed by Chinese carmaker Mountainous Wall, Haomo raises $14M for independent driving tech | TechCrunch – Techcrunch
After a pair of years of funding frenzy, independent driving companies in China are experiencing a slowdown in investment. Some companies are peaceable hauling in capital, though the generation of bankrolling a couple of hundred million greenbacks in a single spherical has principally passed.
Haomo.ai, an independent driving startup backed by Chinese automaker Mountainous Wall Motor, has raised 100 million yuan, or $14 million, from a current spherical of funding, it acknowledged at the current time. The investment is the first tranche of the firm’s Series B funding and became as soon as led by Chengdu Wufa Private Equity Fund Administration, an investment automobile backed by the government of Chengdu.
As international project capital companies retreat from China, home merchants, namely ones with native government funding, have stepped up to help the nation’s emerging tech darlings. Four-yr-extinct Haomo has raised over $200 million price of equity funding, in step with startup database ITJuzi, and all of that money became as soon as denominated in Chinese yuan.
Chinese food transport giant Meituan and Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate project arm of Qualcomm, are amongst Haomo’s past merchants.
Beneficial by CEO Gu Weihao, a Baidu neat automobile vulnerable, Haomo has been focusing on establishing Level 2 superior driver help programs for passenger vehicles, principally selling to its greatest shareholder Mountainous Wall, a major producer of SUVs and pickup trucks in China. It additionally offers Level 4 self-driving ideas to logistics vehicles, counting Meituan, Alibaba and JD.com amongst its purchasers.
The investment from Chengdu, which is identified for its giant pandas and delicious, consuming food, ties Haomo to an agreement to receive robotics for Wuhou, a central district of the city. Local governments in China in most cases compete to change into nationwide “demo zones” for cutting-edge technologies by means of the attend of personal tech companies. For Wuhou, Haomo’s cleaning and safety inspection robots will relieve because the centerpiece of the district’s technological showcase.
Haomo’s ADAS ideas, which near with facets worship computerized braking and lane changing, have powered more than 20 automobile units and accumulated some 120 million kilometers of driving, the firm acknowledged. Its self-driving transport trucks have ferried shut to 300,000 grocery parcels for supermarkets in Beijing.
Haomo is competing with a substandard of Chinese AV upstarts that raised money from Western VCs and, resembling Pony.ai, WeRide, Momenta, Deeproute. Apart from Momenta, all of them effect out with the ambition to receive robotaxis. Having realized L4 driving is capital-intensive and peaceable years from current adoption, they’ve opted for a route more much like that of Haomo, working on much less superior but more readily deployable L2 or L3 products.
Haomo’s advantage is Mountainous Wall’s involvement. Being cradled by a major auto customary equipment producer (OEM) gives it with the revenues desired to fund costly R&D without limiting itself to factual selling to 1 customer. Haomo offers its ADAS to three assorted OEMs, in step with a firm spokesperson, declining to title them.
