Baidu-backed DeepWay bags 770 million yuan in Series A+ financing round

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Baidu-backed autonomous truck developer DeepWay announced on March 28 it has recently completed a 770-million-yuan ($118 million) Series A+ equity financing. 

Photo credit: DeepWay

The round was led by Shandong Weiqiao Pioneering Group, along with SoftBank China Capital, and returning investors, including Qiming Venture Partners. The funds raised will mainly be used to manufacture DeepWay's intelligent new energy heavy-duty trucks and be invested in the development of advanced autonomous driving systems, aiming to ensure efficient production and high-quality delivery, as well as further consolidate DeepWay's competitiveness in the intelligent new energy heavy-duty truck market.

This round of funding comes only six months after the completion of DeepWay's Series A round and is seen as another vote of confidence from top-tier investors. DeepWay has so far raised more than 1.2 billion yuan ($183 million).

As one of the lead investors in this round of financing, Weiqiao Pioneering Group will also become one of DeepWay's first seed customers. The two parties will perfectly integrate large industrial customer closed-loop transportation solutions with intelligent new energy heavy-duty trucks. At the same time, by accumulating vehicle operation and large-scale management data, the duo will promote more business collaboration scenarios, demonstrating the landing and application of smart logistics transportation solutions to the industry.

Currently, DeepWay's first product, the "Xingchen" has entered into the small-scale trial operation stage and successfully covered multiple real-world operation scenarios. Different from traditional autonomous driving solution companies that rely on limited modified vehicles to perform testing, DeepWay aims to leverage data accumulated from large-scale production vehicles in real scenarios to promote rapid iteration of its autonomous driving capabilities. According to the company's operating plan, DeepWay's autonomous driving system-powered Xingchen vehicles will go into mass production in June 2023.