The future of scene logistics market, with a scale of hundreds of billions, is promising
Recently, autonomous driving company Senior Auto (Chinese: 斯年智驾) announced that it has completed a series B financing round worth hundreds of CNY millions, becoming the first funding in the autonomous driving sector in 2024.
This round of financing was led by Lihet Capital (Chinese: 力合资本), and Zhejiang Jintou Dingxin (Chinese: 浙江金投鼎新), a subsidiary of Zhejiang Financial Holdings (Chinese: 浙江金控).
It is reported that the raised funds will be mainly used for technology research and development, expanding into the logistics market, including ports, bulk cargo distribution centers, logistics parks, and short-haul transportation between sites. The funding will also support the company's overseas market expansion and ensure the commercialization of autonomous driving technology on a larger scale.
Founded in 2020, Senior Auto focuses on the global scene logistics autonomous driving field, providing unmanned container trucks, unmanned intelligent tablet transport equipment, and transportation operation services. Its CEO, He Bei, previously worked in Baidu's autonomous vehicle team and is one of the early experts in port autonomous driving.
Public information illustrates that since its establishment, Senior Auto's unmanned transport fleet has been deployed in Ningbo Port, Tangshan Port, Zhuhai Port, Suzhou Port, Xiamen Port, Suqian Port, Weifang Port, and Qingdao Port, with projects covering coastal and inland ports in China. As of the end of 2023, Senior Auto has deployed a total of 220 unmanned transport vehicles in all business lines of scene logistics and has obtained commercial paid orders from 8 ports.
Since its establishment, Senior Auto has completed a total of 7 financing rounds, with investors including Chentao Capital, GF Xinde, Jinbang Capital, ByteDance Strategic Investment Department, Shuimu Venture Capital, Rongyi Investment, Hubin Capital, Zhiqing Industrial, Yonghua Investment, Xinxingji Group, Lihet Capital, and Zhejiang Financial Holdings.
Regarding this round of financing, Xu Benbo, Vice President of Lihet Capital, demonstrated that, "Autonomous driving technology is a technological revolution in the transportation field that is no less significant than the transformation of energy structure. However, in the short term, due to factors such as laws, ethics, and technology, it needs to be gradually cultivated and applied in closed or semi-closed scenarios. Therefore, the volume of the track scenario is important in the short term, but the characteristics of the track scenario and whether these characteristics can be effectively extended to broader tracks are equally important. Combined with the background of China as a major automotive technology, manufacturing, and foreign trade country, after several years of development, I believe that Senior Auto's entire autonomous driving solution will be competitive globally."
"Capital is optimistic about the scene logistics autonomous driving, and the achievements we have made are partly due to the vast market potential of autonomous driving in the scene logistics field. In the next step, Senior Auto will continue to invest firmly, improve productization capabilities, output industrial capabilities, expand into the overseas market, and enter a comprehensive development stage," expressed He Bei, founder and CEO of Senior Auto.