DiDi Autonomous Driving said to close over $3 million funding round

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- DiDi Autonomous Driving, the self-driving technology arm of Didi Chuxing (DiDi), is about to raise over $300 million, of which $200 million will be invested by GAC Group, according to a local media outlet.

Photo credit: DiDi

The new funding will value DiDi Autonomous Driving higher than Chinese autonomous driving startup Pony.ai, said a person briefed on the matter. The latter completed its Series C financing in February, bagging $367 million in total. 

DiDi Autonomous Driving last month entered into a strategic partnership with GAC Aion, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GAC Group, for the development of fully self-driving new energy vehicles (NEVs) available for volume production.

Under the agreement, the duo will explore a joint venture partnership and project cooperation for smart vehicle development, combining DiDi Autonomous Driving's hardware and software R&D capabilities with GAC Aion's NEV engineering and manufacturing expertise. The two parties will co-develop a self-driving NEV model for large-scale commercial application and move at full force for the vehicle's volume production, through the innovation across such basic areas as drive-by-wire chassis, autonomous driving sensors, and system integration.

Apart from GAC Group, DiDi Autonomous Driving also works with BAIC Group. In June 2020, the two companies signed a framework agreement to have an in-depth cooperation on fields of automobile, AI and car sharing. At the 2020 World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference (WICV), a BEIJING EU7 that carries DiDi's autonomous driving solution made its world's debut and offered trial rides to the public.

DiDi launched its autonomous driving project in 2016 and upgraded it to a wholly-owned subsidiary in 2019. For the time being, DiDi Autonomous Driving has been permitted to test autonomous cars on open roads in Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, Suzhou, and California.