Autopilot company Jingchi raised $52 million, and Nvidia also voted

On September 26, 2017, Jingchi Technology, a leading Chinese autonomous driving company, announced the completion of its Pre-A funding round, securing $52 million. The round was led by Qiming Ventures, with Huachuang Capital and NVIDIA GPU Ventures also participating as key investors. Qi Mingping, a managing partner at Qiming, joined Jingchi's board, marking a significant step forward in the company’s mission to revolutionize transportation.

Founded in April 2017, Jingchi quickly made waves in the autonomous vehicle industry. Just five weeks after its launch, it completed its first closed-course autonomous test. By June 18, it became the 34th company to receive a California autonomous vehicle testing license. Then, on June 24—only 81 days after its founding—it successfully conducted its first open-road autonomous test in Sunnyvale, California. These milestones demonstrated the company's rapid progress and technical capabilities.

In August 2017, Jingchi signed an agreement with Anqing City in Anhui Province to deploy 50 autonomous vehicles for operational testing by the end of 2017. The plan for 2018 includes providing hundreds of NVIDIA DRIVE PX-equipped autonomous vehicles to offer "robot taxi" services in the region. This collaboration aims to bring self-driving technology closer to everyday users.

Jing Jin, founder and CEO of Jingchi, stated: “We are committed to building an innovative smart mobility ecosystem that will make travel safer, more efficient, cost-effective, and comfortable. Our goal is to achieve full autonomy by 2020, making driverless cars a common sight in Chinese cities. This investment brings us one step closer to realizing our vision.”

Han Xu, co-founder and CTO of Jingchi, added: “The NVIDIA DRIVE PX platform plays a crucial role in enhancing our deep learning capabilities. Its powerful computing performance significantly improves the safety and reliability of our autonomous vehicles. We look forward to leveraging the full potential of DRIVE PX and working closely with NVIDIA to bring self-driving services to China.”

Qi Ziping, a managing partner at Qiming Ventures, said: “We have been closely following the development of AI and autonomous driving. These technologies have the potential to completely transform how people live. Jingchi’s team has impressed us, and we are proud to support them from the beginning, helping them become the first company to bring autonomous driving to the mass market.”

Jeff Herbst, vice president of business development at NVIDIA, commented: “Artificial intelligence is reshaping the entire transportation industry. Jingchi’s vision to develop autonomous technology using deep learning is exciting, and we fully support their efforts.”

Dong Lei, deputy mayor of Anqing City, said: “Anqing is a city rich in history and culture, and it is currently undergoing rapid development. With the national push for emerging industries, we are committed to supporting companies like Jingchi. We will help them conduct R&D and testing here and work together to build a demonstration zone for autonomous vehicle operations.”

Jingchi is a fast-growing autonomous driving technology company with offices in both China and the U.S. It currently employs over 50 people, with more than 80% being engineers. Many come from top universities such as Carnegie Mellon, University of Illinois, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Others. The core team has extensive experience in autonomous driving, with members previously working at Baidu, Shenzhou, Didi, Uber, and Tesla.

This article provides an overview of Jingchi Technology’s recent $52 million funding round, supported by NVIDIA and other key players. For more updates and detailed information on the latest developments in automotive electronics and autonomous driving, stay tuned to Electronic Engineering. We aim to bring you the most comprehensive and up-to-date insights on this exciting field.