Yuanrong Qihang recently announced the completion of a $100 million C1 round strategic financing, exclusively invested by a leading domestic vehicle manufacturer (Great Wall). This round of financing will be used to solidify domestic mass production projects, expand overseas business, and provide financial support for exploring Robotaxi commercial operations and deploying cutting-edge technologies such as the VLA model.

Zhou Guang, CEO of Yuanrong Qihang, stated at a communication meeting on November 5th that the first half of the electric vehicle "electrification" era is nearing its end, and the next five years will be the main battlefield for "intelligent driving." Zhou Guang believes that the competition in the autonomous driving industry is fierce, but it will become even more brutal in the future.

Autonomous Driving, Driverless

It is understood that Yuanrong Qihang was one of the early companies to introduce AI technology into the autonomous driving industry. By mass-producing smart driving vehicles and obtaining a large amount of de-identified data from the physical world, they aim to create an "AI brain" with advanced human intelligence, and deploy technologies such as "mapless" and end-to-end models, dedicated to creating a "general artificial intelligence (AGI) for the physical world," leading the transformation of the intelligent driving industry with innovative technologies.

As of now, Yuanrong Qihang has over 800 employees, with more than 80% being R&D personnel. The company has completed six rounds of financing, with a cumulative amount exceeding $500 million. Investors include Alibaba, Fosun RZ Capital, Yunqi Partners, and Yaotu Capital.

With the recent completion of the $100 million financing, Yuanrong Qihang will focus on three main areas: mass production, VLA models, and Robotaxi. In terms of mass production, the high-level intelligent driving platform DeepRouteIO from Yuanrong Qihang has been successfully installed on vehicles, with more than 10 mass production projects and over 20,000 vehicles jointly produced with car manufacturers.

In the VLA model layer, as one of the first companies in China to obtain NVIDIA's Thor chip, Yuanrong Qihang will conduct research and development on the VLA model (Vision-Language-Action Model) based on this chip, which is expected to be officially launched in 2025.

In the Robotaxi layer, Yuanrong Qihang is currently exploring new commercialization routes, which is to achieve large-scale Robotaxi operations using mass-produced vehicles based on end-to-end models. Unlike traditional Robotaxis, Yuanrong Qihang's Robotaxis are not restricted by operational areas, offering advantages in time and economic costs, which helps to accelerate the implementation of Robotaxis.