Roadstar.ai raises record $128 million in Series A round

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- Shenzhen-based self-driving startup Roadstar.ai announced a $128 million Series A round financing on May 15, which was by far the biggest financing value in China's autonomous driving industry. The investment was led by Wu Capital and Shenzhen Capital Group and also involved such investors as Yunqi Partners, CMB International and Vision Plus Capital.

Founded in May 2017, the startup specializes in Level 4 autonomous driving technologies. It had completed $10 million of angel round that was invested by Yunqi Partners, Green Pine Capital Partners, Ventech China, Glory Ventures, etc. The company currently own R&D centers in Shenzhen and Silicon Valley and has tested its self-driving vehicles on public roads of China and US since September last year.

At the same time, Roadstar.ai unveiled its first self-developed self-driving product dubbed the Aries. According to Tong Xianqiao, the startup’s CEO, the Aries is able to carry out measurement and perception with the help of diverse heterogeneous sensors, such as Lidar, camera, millimeter-wave radar, GPS, etc. Meanwhile, the Aries can help achieve a high-precision driving, controlling the deviation within 5cm at any speed and on any types of roads. It is noteworthy that the Aries, carrying the homegrown Lidar and having L4 self-driving performance, only costs no more than RMB 300 thousand. Tong also revealed that the company aims to decrease the cost of this solution below RMB 50 thousand by 2020.

Roadstar.ai plans to operate 50 self-driving cars in Shenzhen this year, and increase this number to 200 units in 2019. In 2020, including growing its self-driving vehicles to 1500 units in Shenzhen, the startup is also ambitious to achieve self-driving technology without any human intervention.