China’s Neolix Technologies has secured 1 billion yuan ($137.3 million) in an extended Series C round of financing as it looks to accelerate the commercialisation of Level 4 autonomous vehicles in the logistics industry, particularly for urban deliveries.
Beijing-headquartered Neolix raised the new financing from multiple logistics companies and financial investors, including CICC Capital, a unit of China International Capital Corp (CICC), the startup announced on Thursday. It did not name the industry investors from the logistics sector.
The Series C+ funding comes as Neolix is on track to becoming the first Chinese company to deliver over 10,000 L4 commercial autonomous vehicles. The startup said that its cumulative client orders crossed 20,000 at the start of 2025 and that it will celebrate the delivery of its 10,000th vehicle this year.
The startup claims to be the world’s biggest L4 commercial autonomous vehicle maker with deliveries of more than 3,000 units as of today. The aggregate mileage of its vehicles is above 30 million kilometres (over 18.6 million miles).
Neolix, founded in early 2018, specialises in the development of autonomous logistics vehicles, or the so-called “Robovans” that automate deliveries of goods and cargo in office and industrial parks, university campuses, residences, and central business districts.
‘Robovan’ gains traction
The notion of “Robovan” made the headlines when Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk surprised the public with a concept version of the autonomous electric Robovan at the company’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. Unlike Neolix’s vehicles, Musk touted the Tesla Robovan as a vehicle that can carry up to 20 people and can also transport goods.
But Tesla was not the first company interested in the name “Robovan.” Starship Technologies, an autonomous delivery robot developer founded by Skype’s Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, announced as early as 2016 a plan to partner with Mercedes-Benz in developing a “Robovan” for neighbourhood goods deliveries. Its Robovan is not a self-driving vehicle, but a van specially designed to accommodate its delivery robots.
In China, self-driving firm WeRide started a partnership with JMC-Ford Motors, a joint venture between the state-owned automaker Jiangling Motors Corp and Ford, in 2021 to manufacture its own self-driving, intra-city Robovans.
Yu Enyuan, Neolix’s founder and CEO, said that the startup has achieved what he calls “the third revolution” in autonomous logistics vehicles by combing such vehicles with fully automated cargo-handling solutions. This follows two earlier revolutions around the full automation of parcel sorting and the adoption of unmanned warehouses.
The progress has allowed Neolix to reduce the average cost of deliveries by over 50%, according to Yu.
He projected that Neolix, already a key supplier of Robovans to SF Express, JD Logistics, and China Post, will enjoy “a boom” in the commercialisation of its vehicles in sectors like fresh produce, cold chain, supermarket, and express deliveries in the second half of 2025.
Less than 12 months ago, Neolix announced the completion of its Series C round at 600 million yuan ($82.4 million) with support from investors including CICC Capital and Shell Ventures, the British oil major Shell’s independently operating venture capital firm.
In 2021, the startup closed a Series B round at “a few hundred million Chinese yuan,” with CICC Capital and SoftBank Ventures Asia jointly leading the deal. It raised nearly 100 million yuan ($13.7 million) in a Series A round in 2019.
