Self-driving company Heduo Technology completes C1 round financing GAC exclusive investment logic of car companies "exposed"

Recently, Heduo Technology announced the completion of the C1 round of financing exclusively injected by GAC.

Heduo Technology, a provider of self-driving solutions, was founded in 2017 and is one of the few companies in China with full-stack self-driving research and development capabilities. IDG Capital, Sequoia Capital China and BAI Capital were all investors in Heduo. Founder Ni Kai, who previously worked for Microsoft and Baidu, founded Baidu's self-driving team.

This is GAC GROUP's second investment in the field of self-driving investment this year: in addition to Heduo Technology, GAC also made a strategic investment of more than $300m in Didi's self-driving on May 31 this year.

As a well-known domestic car company, GAC GROUP established GAC Capital wholly-owned in 2013. Yuan Feng, director and general manager of GAC Capital, once described the positioning and investment logic of GAC Capital in this way: "as GAC GROUP's capital operation and equity investment platform, GAC Capital's investment must revolve around the 'new four modernizations'-electrification, networking, intelligence and sharing."

According to public data, the total capital investment of GAC has exceeded 1.1 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for about 70% of the total investment in the field of automobile "new four modernizations", of which the cumulative investment in the intelligent driving industry accounts for more than 50%. In addition, GAC Capital has also made great efforts to lay out the new energy track.

Bet on "autopilot"

As a well-known domestic car company, GAC GROUP has been in the field of self-driving for a long time.

In 2013, GAC developed the WitStar, the first driverless concept car with independent intellectual property rights, which can achieve peer-to-peer self-driving. GAC Eian (formerly known as "GAC NE") was established in 2017 to undertake the important task of GAC GROUP's implementation of the intelligent network alliance new energy strategy. The autopilot system ADiGO developed by GAC and the subsequent versions 2.0,3.0 have been introduced into the testing of different series of new energy vehicles under GAC. For example, the, Aion LX has become the first passenger model of GAC's L3 autopilot system. The new system not only covers all the functions of L2 autopilot, but also extends the operation scene to all highways and urban expressways in China.

In July this year, Guangzhou Auto L4 self-driving car passed the urban self-driving test in Zhaoqing City, and obtained the Guangzhou Intelligent Network vehicle road test license. It is also the first to carry out road testing and demonstration operation on the open test road of Panyu Automobile City.

At present, GAC GROUP has formed a global R & D network with GAC R&D CENTER as the core, with R & D centers in Silicon Valley, Detroit, Los Angeles, Shanghai and other places. According to the introduction, GAC currently has a research team of more than 4300 people from 15 countries and regions. Team members are still expanding. Recently, GAC GROUP invited St é phane Janin, former Renault concept car director, to join as GAC R&D CENTER forward-looking design director and GAC European forward-looking design center director. It was also announced earlier that Chen Xuewen, a former Didi executive and the world's top expert in the field of artificial intelligence, would become the chief professional expert of GAC R&D CENTER.

In addition to relying on his own R & D team to seek transformation, GAC GROUP has been cooperating with external enterprises. ADiGO (Intelligent vehicle Interconnection) is a smart car interconnected ecosystem independently developed by GAC with the support of Tencent, Huawei and other partners.

Just in October this year, Baidu and GAC Eian released the pre-production unmanned car of Apollo Moon, a self-driving vehicle that can meet the needs of unmanned operation. Previously, the L3 autopilot system of Aion LX, owned by Guangzhou Auto, has reached cooperation with Baidu Maps at the high-precision map level.

In addition, the self-driving model of GAC and Huawei will be launched in 2023, and GAC is also one of the three major partners in the "HUAWEI Inside" model of Huawei's smart car to be built.

Similarly, the cooperation between Didi and GAC is getting deeper and deeper. In May this year, GAC EAN and Didi self-driving announced that they would jointly develop self-driving new energy vehicles with the goal of mass production.

New energy and carbon neutralization have become hot spots this year.

In addition to focusing on production and research in the automotive field, GAC is also actively investing in new energy and semiconductor races.

GAC Capital attaches importance to the key links of the new energy supply chain, and vigorously supports its own technology, Calterah, E-Airlines Intelligence and other industry leading enterprises. GAC regards the choice of power battery as a key link in the manufacture of new energy vehicles, and makes an in-depth study of several possibilities of future battery development-fuel cells, solar cells, solid-state batteries, etc., and finally locates in the field of solid-state batteries. To seize the lithium battery race track, it invested in Qingtao Development, Zhuhai Guanyu, AVIC Lithium.

This year, GAC can also be seen frequently in the field of carbon neutralization in the hot track. Semiconductor silicon carbide material has the characteristics of high temperature resistance, strong stability and good conductivity, which makes it the most widely used semiconductor material in high temperature, high frequency, anti-radiation and high power applications.

Combing through the investment events of GAC Capital in 2021, it is found that GAC Capital concentrated its efforts on semiconductor chips, especially silicon carbide materials this year: in July, it participated in the A round financing of Yue Xin Semiconductor. Yuexin Semiconductor is currently Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area's first and only 12-inch wafer manufacturer that has entered mass production; in September, it participated in over 600 million RMB A round financing for investment in Shanghai Hanxin Technology. In October and November, Zhanxin Electronics, a domestic leader in silicon carbide chips, was continuously invested.