China-based autonomous driving technology developer QCraft has raised $100m in a series A-plus round that included Longzhu Capital, the venture capital arm of e-commerce and local services platform Meituan.
The round was led by private equity firm Yunfeng Capital and also featured Genesis Capital, IDG Capital and an undisclosed pension fund.
Founded in 2019, QCraft develops autonomous driving software designed to navigate complex urban environments, using intelligent simulation systems and a self-learning framework.
While it is not unique in that sense – companies like Waymo and Uber are also using simulation-based technology – Qcraft claims its own is more sophisticated.
The funding will be used to commercialise the company’s technology, which is intended for use in a range of intelligent urban mobility scenarios such as ride hailing, automated carpooling and shuttle buses.
In April 2020, IDG Capital led a $24m seed round for QCraft in which Tide Capital and Vision Plus Capital also invested. Digital media group ByteDance reportedly provided an undisclosed amount of funding in March 2021.
With offices in Silicon Valley and Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shenzhen, QCraft has been ramping up its activity over the past few years, carrying out road tests in California since 2019. It has since turned its sights to Chinese roads, where it is testing its Longzhou One automated minibuses.
The company aims to have more than 100 minibuses with level 4 automation, in which humans set the route while the system takes control of the driving, operational in China by the end of 2021.
