Recently, HoloMatic, an autonomous driving company founded last month, announced that it has raised dozens of millions of USD in the angel round with IDG Capital and NavInfo as the lead investors, and other investors include iMotion and Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI).
With the arrival of a new wave of AI empowered by deep learning, autonomous driving, the ultimate form of mobility, has received unprecedented attention and is pushing the entire automobile industry to a tipping point. Various institutional investors and companies in related sectors are planning ahead for the latest trend. It is quite impressive that shortly after its inception, HoloMatic, a newcomer in the competitive sector, receives investments from IDG Capital, NavInfo, iMotion and BAI enjoying the support of both first-rate institutional investors and important strategic investors.
HoloMatic was created at the end of August this year by Dr. Kai Ni, known as the forerunner of autonomous driving in China. The core team members of HoloMatic are among the first technical elites in China who have devoted themselves to autonomous driving. It only takes HoloMatic one month to raise an angel funding round following its inception.
“China is a huge market with unique use cases”, said Kai Ni, founder and CEO of HoloMatic, when asked about the autonomous driving market in China, “As automobile industry is relatively closed, data is the key to the success of an automobile company in the Chinese market. Compared to the autonomous driving companies from Europe and US who have difficulties in adapting to the unique realities in China, the team of HoloMatic has an inherent advantage in understanding the Chinese market.” IDG Capital’s investment in HoloMatic reflects that it understands the urgent need of Chinese automobile industry for series production-ready autonomous driving technologies in the future and the local research and development activities in China will play a key role in satisfying the need.
Navigation and localization based on high-definition map is of great importance in making a self-driving vehicle move safely in any environment, location and circumstance. Autonomous driving requires extremely accurate maps, in particular for the unique traffic conditions in China, so it is crucial to partner with a capable map provider. As the largest digital map provider in China, NavInfo has been pursuing the integration of digital map, connectivity, autonomous driving, big data and chip, which is a highlight in the recent wave of AI. As the only autonomous driving technology company that NavInfo has invested in, HoloMatic has got enviable advantages from the financial resources provided by NavInfo, which serve as a strong catalyst for the research, development and application of its products.
iMotion is among the investors in the funding round. Created in 2016, iMotion is an AI company keen on investing in autonomous driving, which it believes will cause disruptive change in the mobility of the future. BAI has also put its focus on intelligent technologies in recent years. Both companies have a positive view of the future development of HoloMatic in autonomous driving.
Alongside the financing, HoloMatic has launched its own R＆D platform for autonomous driving, including wire control modules developed independently in house, multi-sensor fusion and core algorithm design, which makes HoloMatic one of the few companies with full-stack capabilities of autonomous driving and allows the company to provide series production-ready solutions. The strategy of HoloMatic is different from most other L4/5 startup companies who purchase vehicle platforms from third parties and rely on 64-beam lidar to create prototypes. Before that, HoloMatic has made it clear that at the current stage, the goal of the company is to provide L3.5 autonomous driving solutions based on cutting-edge artificial intelligence and automotive technologies. According to the Society of Automotive Engineers, there are 6 levels of automated driving and L3.5 is the first redefinition of the format of product based on L3 and L4 technologies in the industry from the perspective of human (driver), which triggered an intense debate in the industry.
Based on its own R＆D platform, HoloMatic has begun to road test vehicles and meanwhile, the development of functionalities targeting at series production has been going on smoothly. In addition, HoloMatic is refining the underlying technologies to push them towards the core objective of L3.5 autonomous driving. Every autonomous driving professional understands the importance of R＆D platform to the development and debugging of autonomous driving systems. In the near future, HoloMatic is very likely to disclose more details of its progress in R＆D and the technologies used on the R＆D platform.
