WeRide.ai, the China-based autonomous driving software developer formerly known as JingChi.ai, has raised an undisclosed eight-figure dollar amount from investors including image recognition software producer SenseTime, China Money Network has reported.
SenseTime was joined by ABC International, an investment unit of the Agricultural Bank of China, the two providing the funding in the form of an extension to an undisclosed amount of series A funding the company secured in October 2018.
WeRide is developing autonomous driving technology that uses artificial intelligence to plan and map routes without requiring human interaction. It plans to use the series A funds to deploy a fleet of 500 autonomous vehicles this year.
Alliance Ventures, the investment partnership formed by carmakers Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi, led the first tranche, which included motor and automotive component producer Johnson Electric.
Qiming Venture Capital, Hanfor Capital, Atop Capital, Idinvest Partners, OceanIQ Capital and Xiaopeng He filled out the round’s first close.
The company had already raised $52m in a September 2017 pre-series A round led by Qiming Venture Partners featuring Nvidia GPU Ventures, the corporate venturing vehicle for graphics processing technology producer Nvidia, and undisclosed additional investors.