China-based autonomous driving technology producer WeRide has raised $400m from investors including car manufacturer GAC and industrial technology and applince manufacturer Robert Bosch, LatePost has reported.
Private equity firm Carlyle and China-Arab Investment Funds also took part in the round, at a valuation of $4.4bn. It reportedly boosted the company’s total funding to over $1.2bn.
Founded in 2017 as Jingchi, WeRide develops software and hardware to retrofit vehicles with the capability to achieve level 4 autonomous driving, which would allow cars to drive themselves but still give the driver the option of taking over.
Alliance Ventures, an investment firm formed by carmakers Renault, Mitsubishi and Nissan, had participated in a $310m series C round for the company in June 2021 a valuation of $3.3bn alongside IDG Capital, Homeric Capital, CoStone Capital, Cypress Star, Sky9 Capital, K3 Ventures, CMC Capital Partners, Qiming Venture Partners and Alpview Capital.
Bus producer Yutong took part in the company’s series B round, which closed at $310m in January 2021 and which inlcuded MC Capital Partners, CDB Equipment Manufacturing Fund, Hengjian Emerging Industries Fund, Zhuhai Huajin Capital, Tryin Capital, Qiming, Sinovation Ventures and Kinzon Capital.
Image recognition software producer SenseTime had invested an eight-figure sum in the company in 2019, Alliance Ventures and motor technology producer Johnson Electric having taken part in a round of similarly undisclosed size the previous year with Qiming, Hanfor Capital, Atop Capital, Idinvest Partners, OceanIQ Capital and Xiaopeng He.
Nvidia GPU Ventures, the investment arm of graphics processing technology provider Nvidia, had participated in WeRide’s $52m pre-series A round, which was led by Qiming in 2017.
Image courtesy of WeRide.ai.
