The investment will be used to elevate Level 4 autonomous driving technology and its application the company is working on, scale up its testing truck fleets and hire talents in the future. PlusAI plans to grow its fleet to 1,000 self-driving trucks in next two year.
On Nov 15, 2018, PlusAI, a Beijing-based autonomous truck technology startup, has raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A+ funding round led by Sequoia Capital China. Its backers also include China Growth Ventures, Lightspeed China Partners, GSR Ventures and Manbang Group, etc.
According to LIU Wanqian, the chief executive officers of PlusAI, The investment will be used to elevate Level 4 autonomous driving technology and its application the company is working on, scale up its testing truck fleets and hire talents in the future. PlusAI plans to grow its fleet to 1,000 self-driving trucks in next two year.
PlusAI, founded in 2016, is one of the companies that obtained the California's Autonomous Vehicle Testing License, has research centers in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Suzhou. PlusAI focuses on line-haul trucking and transporting cargo between ports, plants, and warehouses, as they called it hub-to-hub autonomous driving. In May 2018, the company has completed a hub-to-hub road test with Suning Holdings Group successfully, a leading commercial enterprise in China, which is one of the company's autonomous trucking milestones.
Manbang Group, a merged company between Chinese Uber-like truck logistics unicorns Yun Man Man and Huo Che Bang, is one of PlusAI's closest partners. The partnership between Manbang and PlusAI is deeply rooted by their common vision, which is to bring autonomous dring into logistics industry in China. WANG Gang, the CEO of Manbang Group, pointed out the development of autonomous driving will change mobility landscape and logistics industry completely, intelligent and unmanned car is a promising future and Manbang Group will share more commercial and research resources with PlusAI.
More than 5 million of the 7 million trucks running on China's arterial roads and 1.2 million of the country's 1.5 million logistics firms are members of Manbang Group. With the help of high-definition mapping resources provided by Manbang Group, PlusAI is walking towards its goal closer.