MINIEYE received RMB 270 million in Series C financing to promote mass production and delivery of autonomous driving perception solutions

 Shenzhen Youjia Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "MINIEYE") , an autonomous driving perception technology developer, announced the completion of a 270 million yuan Series C financing. Investors include Harvest Investment, Oriental Fortune, Yuanjing Capital, Hixih Communications, Shanshan Venture Capital, and old shareholders NavInfo and Kang Chengheng continue to increase their holdings.

Liu Guoqing, the founder and CEO of MINIEYE, stated that the Series C financing will first be used to ease the supply chain pressure caused by large-scale delivery, increase cash flow reserves, and ensure that the procurement needs of OEMs are met in a timely manner; on the other hand, continue to invest in advanced Maintain the competitiveness of technologies and products in the development of autonomous driving technology.

MINIEYE was established in 2014 and mainly develops autonomous driving perception and decision-making solutions. The company has chosen the "gradual" route from the beginning of its establishment, gradually advancing from L1 to L2 to L2+ level, developing automated driving technologies and products that can be mass-produced, and in 2018, cooperated with OEMs to achieve pre-installation mass production.

At present, the OEMs that carry out pre-installation and fixed-point cooperation with MINIEYE include General Motors, Jiangling Ford, SAIC, BYD, Dongfeng, Sinotruk, Shaanxi Automobile, Jianghuai, Jiangling, etc. At the same time, MINIEYE also won the L3 project designation of a commercial vehicle OEM. Commercial vehicle after-installation customers are mainly large-B fleets, including SF Express and Shenzhen West Bus.

Liu Guoqing said that MINIEYE's current series of products facing the front-end and rear-end markets can provide a wealth of data sources. One type of these data is traffic environment data, including data collected by sensors such as cameras, radar, and ultrasonic; the other type is driving behavior data, including steering, accelerator, brakes, etc. By learning the operation of the driver in a specific scenario, the system can make better decisions.

"The war of autonomous driving is actually a war of data. Data is a scarce resource, and the more important it is in the future. Although I am an algorithm, the advantages of algorithms are actually diminishing." Liu Guoqing It was mentioned that using data to drive research and development is very important in the technology chain of autonomous driving, and it can also broaden the boundaries of business models.

A typical application case of MINIEYE in data is to help customers update relevant data of high-precision maps. Taking the strategic investor NavInfo as an example, MINIEYE uses mass production equipment to return data in real time according to specific needs, helping NavInfo to maintain the "freshness" advantage of high-resolution maps. MINIEYE's data business is also growing rapidly to form scale income.

Liu Guoqing said that because of the explosion of the commercial vehicle market this year and the increase in equipment assembly rates, their revenue this year will increase by more than 250% over last year. The specific figures cannot be disclosed for the time being.