AutoX has raised USD 100 million in series A, investors include Dongfeng Motor and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund.
On September 16, auto-driving company AutoX announced that it has completed a USD 100 million round of financing and will later launch a new round of financing to enter the trillion-dollar autonomous driving market.
In this round, Dongfeng Motor has invested tens of millions of dollars, which is the largest investment by Chinese OEMs in this field. The investors also include Alibaba's Entrepreneurs Fund, Plug and Play China Fund, Hong Kong HKSTP Technology Development Fund, and other investment institutions.
It is worth noting that Dongfeng Motor as a leading investor has brought far-reaching strategic effects to AutoX. With the investment, Dongfeng Motor and AutoX launched a autonomous driving strategic plan for the full model of commercial vehicles. Foreign investors include investment from Southeast Asia, and will also help AutoX enter the Southeast Asian market in the future, laying a solid foundation for China's autonomous driving technology to go overseas.
Previously, AutoX's investor list included OEMs and autopilot upstream chip makers, such as SAIC and MediaTek. After the completion of this round of financing, the strategic investment of the car enterprise and the application organizations was gathered. This will greatly accelerate the pace of AutoX technology.
By investing in one of the largest amount of financing for China's autonomous driving sector in 2019, it seems that Alibaba's ecosystem will unlock its ground-breaking applications in the logistics sector. Alibaba Entrepreneurs Funds was funded by Alibaba in 2015 as a non-profitable organization, managing USD 200 million from Alibaba's retained earnings. Its investments cover many sectors while auto and mobility ranks the second in terms of the investment amount.
Xiao Jianxiong (肖健雄), chairman of AutoX, said that after this round of financing, the company will lead to the next stage: complete the construction of large-scale autonomous driving motorcade, layout high-quality resources for strategic cooperation and continue to expand the R&D team.