DeepRoute secured $100 million in Series C1 funding from Great Wall Motor, after becoming a supplier of smart driving solutions to the automaker in March.
Chinese autonomous driving startup DeepRoute has secured a $100 million Series C1 round of funding, adding capital ammunition for the development of high-level smart driving solutions.
The company announced the funding today, saying the investor is a “prestigious Chinese automotive OEM”.
DeepRoute didn't mention the automaker by name, but CnEVPost learnt that it is Great Wall Motor (HKG: 2333), based in Baoding, Hebei province.
The funding will enhance the development of end-to-end model DeepRoute IO, help expand global automaker collaborations and explore future robotaxi businesses, and support the recruitment of more AI-native talents, DeepRoute said.
Since August, about 20,000 vehicles integrated with DeepRoute IO have been delivered to customers, according to the company.
DeepRoute plans to work with select OEM customers to release more than 10 other series models next year and develop the next generation of DeepRoute IO utilizing the VLA Model (Vision-Language-Action Model), slated for launch next year.
Three models equipped with the DeepRoute smart driving system are expected to be launched to the consumer market by the end of this year, it said.
DeepRoute's extensive experience in mass production in the domestic market will enhance its partnerships with global automakers, the company added.
Founded in 2019, Shenzhen-based DeepRoute initiated development in 2020 of its HD-map-free technology, which debuted in 2023, enabling vehicles to navigate from one address to another across cities and highways without the need for high-definition maps.
It began road-testing its end-to-end model in August 2023 and officially deployed it in production vehicles this year.
DeepRoute is one of Nvidia's partners and among the first companies in China to get the US chipmaker's Thor chips.
The company will conduct research and development on the VLA model based on the Thor chip, with the model expected to be officially launched in 2025, it said.
With the VLA model, the smart driving system will have higher-level thinking capabilities, able to understand complex interaction events, hidden semantic information and reason logically in traffic scenarios, the company said.
This is one of the few large funding rounds in China's autonomous driving technology sector in the past few years, as some tech giants have even cut back their efforts in the field amid macroeconomic challenges.
With autonomous driving companies currently struggling to secure non-government funding, DeepRoute's large investment from an OEM is encouraging for the autonomous driving industry as a whole, the company's CEO, Maxwell Zhou, said at a media briefing today.
The funding marks a deepening of DeepRoute's partnership with Great Wall Motor, after it became the Chinese automaker's second smart driving solution provider after Haomo.AI Technology in March.
Great Wall Motor rolled out its new six-seat Lanshan SUV (sport utility vehicle) under the premium Wey brand in August this year, equipped with DeepRoute's smart driving solution, making it the automaker's first model with city NOA (Navigate On Autopilot) capability.
On October 27, Smart, a joint venture between Geely and Mercedes-Benz, launched the Smart #5, which also features DeepRoute's HD map-independent city NOA function.
In addition to providing smart driving solutions for passenger cars, DeepRoute is also targeting the robotaxi space.
The startup is exploring new routes to commercialization -- based on an end-to-end model to enable robotaxi operations at scale with production vehicles, it said today.
Unlike traditional robotaxis, which rely on pre-mapped data and restricted to specific areas, DeepRoute's robotaxi will be more scalable and more cost-effective to deploy thanks to its end-to-end technology, it said.
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