Haomo.AI Technology, a Chinese autonomous driving startup backed by Great Wall Motor, has successfully secured a new round of funding, marking the first significant investment in the autonomous driving sector after China’s Lunar New Year holiday. The funding round, totaling more than RMB 100 million ($14 million), comes at a time when the autonomous driving industry is facing a capital winter, with few large fundings in recent years.
Chengdu Wufa Private Equity Fund Management, a fund supported by the government of Chengdu in southwest China’s Sichuan province, led the Series B1 funding round for Haomo, according to a statement released today.
See also: Haomo.AI Technology Unveils DriveGPT, a New AI Foundation Model for Self-Driving Cognition
The funding will be used to enhance research and development efforts and support the development of robotics in the Wuhou district, the center of Chengdu. Haomo aims to explore the application of autonomous driving in various scenarios, such as cleaning and security inspection, to help establish Wuhou as a demonstration zone for robotics in China, said the startup’s CEO, Gu Weihao.
The autonomous driving sector has faced funding challenges in recent years, with the macro economy presenting difficulties and some tech giants scaling back their efforts in the field. In May 2023, DAMO Academy, a technology research institute under Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, reportedly merged its autonomous driving business into its logistics arm Cainiao, leading to significant layoffs.
See also: DriveGPT will use RLHF Technology for Real-Time Decision-Making in Autonomous Vehicles
However, Haomo’s announcement of new job openings indicates a positive outlook for the company. It expects the penetration of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in passenger cars in China to reach 70 percent by 2025.
Haomo, which was previously the self-driving division of Great Wall Motor, became an independent company in November 2019. Its core team consists of members from Great Wall Motor’s smart driving R&D team, as well as from tech companies such as Baidu and Huawei. The company’s driver assistance system, HPilot, is currently available in more than 20 models and has accumulated over 120 million kilometers of driving data. Additionally, Haomo’s fleet of level 4 self-driving vans has successfully delivered nearly 300,000 grocery parcels for supermarkets in Beijing.