Chinese ride-hailing giant DiDi Global’s autonomous driving arm has secured 2 billion yuan ($281.1 million) in a Series D round of financing to step up its investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and promote the rollout of L4 robotaxis.
The Series D round brought the autonomous driving arm’s fundraising total to well over 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) since the start of its independent operations in the summer of 2019.
Its post-money valuation remains undisclosed. A Bloomberg report from March said that DiDi was seeking a valuation of $5 billion for its autonomous driving arm in the new funding round.
Seven months in, DiDi Autonomous Driving announced the completion of its Series D round on October 11, with investors including DiDi itself and several Chinese state-backed funds in Beijing and Guangzhou. These external investors include the Zhongguancun Science City Technology Growth Fund, Beijing Information Industry Development Investment Fund, Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund, Guangzhou Guanghua Fund Management, and GAC Group, according to a company statement.
The new funding comes as DiDi Autonomous Driving targets to start delivering its first Level 4 autonomous driving vehicles by the end of this year and then kick off their pilot operations in cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, the company said in the statement.
The L4 vehicle model, which the company has developed in joint hands with GAC Aion, the electric vehicle (EV) subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned automaker GAC Group, is equipped with DiDi’s latest-generation autonomous driving hardware platform that features 33 sensors for 360-degree perception.
Built upon DiDi’s self-driving team created as early as 2016, DiDi Autonomous Driving has acquired public road testing licenses in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hefei, and Guangzhou in China and California in the US, according to its website.
