After a period of furious investment, the autonomous driving industry in China is now seeing a notable decrease in funding. While some companies are still managing to secure funding, the days of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in a single round are over.
Haomo.ai, a startup focused on autonomous driving and backed by major Chinese automaker Great Wall Motor, has announced a new round of funding worth 100 million yuan (approximately $14 million).
This investment marks the first installment of Haomo’s Series B funding and was led by Chengdu Wufa Private Equity Fund Management, a firm backed by the government of Chengdu.
As foreign venture capital firms pull back from the Chinese market, domestic investors, particularly those with support from local governments, have stepped up to invest in the country’s emerging tech leaders. According to startup database ITJuzi, Haomo has already raised over $200 million in equity funding, all in Chinese yuan.
Previous investors in Haomo include Chinese food delivery giant Meituan and Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Qualcomm.
Under the guidance of CEO Gu Weihao, a former Baidu smart car executive, Haomo has primarily focused on developing Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems for passenger vehicles, with Great Wall as its primary client. The company also offers Level 4 self-driving solutions for logistics vehicles, with clients such as Meituan, Alibaba, and JD.com.
One of the most notable aspects of this latest funding round is the involvement of Chengdu, known for its beloved giant pandas and spicy cuisine. As part of the agreement, Haomo will be developing robotics technology for Wuhou, a central district in the city that frequently competes to be a national “demo zone” for cutting-edge technologies in collaboration with private tech firms. This district will showcase Haomo’s cleaning and security inspection robots as its technological centerpiece.
According to the company, Haomo’s ADAS solutions include features such as automatic braking and lane changing, and have been implemented into more than 20 different vehicle models, covering a total of 120 million kilometers of driving. The company’s self-driving delivery vans have successfully delivered close to 300,000 grocery parcels for supermarkets in Beijing.
Haomo is facing competition from a group of Chinese autonomous vehicle startups that have secured funding from Western VCs, such as Pony.ai, WeRide, Momenta, and Deeproute. While most of these companies initially aimed to develop self-driving taxis, they have since realized that Level 4 driving technology is both expensive and not yet ready for widespread adoption. As a result, they have shifted their focus to developing Level 2 or 3 products, similar to Haomo.
One of Haomo’s major advantages is its relationship with Great Wall. Being backed by such a major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) not only provides Haomo with the necessary funds for expensive research and development, but also allows the company to expand beyond one customer. In addition to Great Wall, Haomo also supplies its ADAS to three other OEMs, although the company did not disclose their names.
