Yuanrong Qixing recently announced the completion of a US$100 million C1 round of financing, exclusively invested by Great Wall Motors, marking another round of key development in the field of autonomous driving. This round of financing will be mainly used to enhance mass production projects, expand overseas markets, and develop cutting-edge technologies such as Robotaxi and VLA models. The editor of Downcodes will explain in detail the impact of this financing on Yuanrong Qixing's future development strategy.
Yuanrong Qixing recently announced the completion of a US$100 million C1 round of strategic financing, exclusively invested by the leading domestic OEM (Great Wall). This round of financing will be used to consolidate domestic mass production projects, expand overseas business, and provide financial support for exploring cutting-edge technologies such as Robotaxi commercial operations and layout of VLA models.
Zhou Guang, CEO of Yuanrong Qixing, said at a communication meeting on November 5 that the first half of the "electrification" of new energy vehicles is coming to an end, and the next five years will be the main battlefield for "intelligent driving." Zhou Guang believes that competition in the autonomous driving industry is fierce, but it will be even more brutal in the future.
It is understood that Yuanrong Qixing is one of the earliest companies to introduce AI technology into the autonomous driving industry. Through the mass production of smart driving vehicles on the road, it obtains a large amount of desensitized data of the physical world and builds an "AI brain" with high-level human intelligence. The layout is not shown in the figure. ”, end-to-end models and other technical solutions, we are committed to creating “general artificial intelligence (AGI) for the physical world” and leading the transformation of the intelligent driving industry with innovative technologies.
As of now, Yuanrong Qixing has more than 800 employees, more than 80 of whom are R&D personnel. The company has completed 6 rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount exceeding US$500 million. Investors include Alibaba, Fosun Ruizheng, Yunqi Capital, Yaotu Capital, etc.
Now, with the completion of the latest financing of US$100 million, Yuanrong Qixing will focus on three directions: mass production, VLA models and Robotaxi. At the mass production level, Yuanrong Qixing's high-end smart driving platform DeepRouteIO has been successfully installed on cars. There are more than 10 mass production projects, and more than 20,000 mass-produced cars have been jointly built with car companies.
VLA model layer. As one of the first domestic companies to obtain the NVIDIA Thor chip, Yuanrong Qixing will develop the VLA model (Vision-Language-Action Model, Vision-Language-Action Model) based on this chip. The model is expected to be launched in 2025 Officially launched.
At the robotaxi level, Yuanrong Qixing is currently exploring a new commercialization route, which is to use mass-produced vehicles to realize large-scale operation of Robotaxi based on the end-to-end model. Unlike traditional Robotaxi, Yuanrong Qixing's Robotaxi is not restricted by the operating area and has more advantages in time and economic costs, which will help speed up the implementation of Robotaxi.
This financing will further promote Yuanrong Qixing's leading position in the field of autonomous driving, and its layout in mass production, VLA models and Robotaxi fields is worth looking forward to. In the future, let us wait and see whether Yuanrong Qixing can stand out in the fierce market competition!