Chinese autonomous driving system startup Zongmu Technology Shanghai Co. raises US$ 190 million in its latest Series D funding round on 3 June 2021 from Xiaomi-backed investment fund.
Investors: Zongmu conducted the series D fundraising in three stages. Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Investment Fund Management Co. led the funding round. Japan’s Denso Corp., Fosun Capital Group, Qualcomm Ventures and a fund backed by Chongqing Changan Automobile Co. also invested in this round. Zongmu is considering a listing on the Nasdaq-like STAR board exchange in Shanghai,
About Zongmu
Founded in 2013 by Rui Tang, Zongmu is a self-driving tech firm. It focuses on autonomous driving and advanced driving assistant system technologies and products. Zongmu means “looking afar” in Chinese. The company invests in technological innovation and is committed to meeting the needs of automobile front-loading manufacturers and post-installed consumers. The company has research and development centres in Beijing, Shanghai, Xiamen as well as Stuttgart, Germany. Its manufacturing centre is in Xiamen. The company is headquartered in Shanghai.
One of Zongmu’s flagship products is SurroundView. It is a camera system that stitches together four feeds from fisheye lens-equipped sensors and corrects for any distortion and warped perspective, displaying the finished video on an in-vehicle screen. The company also offers a mobility solution service that facilitates fleet management and operations. It interfaces with third-party products and services like garage payment, parking slot reservation and wireless charging systems.
Zongmu’s connection with China FAW Group Co. provides them with automated valet parking systems, which have been installed in one of the carmaker’s SUV models since late last year. The company is planning to roll out a full level-four AVP system this year, that will allow users to send parking instructions via mobile apps and the cars will drive autonomously to the parking spots.
“The technologies involving machine vision algorithms and high precision sensors can also be applied to other scenarios such as cloud services, autonomous driving on highways All these markets provide great growth potential for our business.” – said Rui Tang.
Some of Zongmu’s notable partners and also China’s biggest automakers include Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. and BAIC Group.
Investing in Zongmu is one of Xiaomi’s first bets on the automotive sector since the company announced a US$ 10 billion plan to build electric vehicles. Xiaomi was also in talks about investing in Black Sesame Technologies Inc., an AI chip designer for cars in China.
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