The forefront | Jidu Automobile received nearly US$400 million in Series A financing, which was increased by Baidu and Geely

Text | Angel Lee

Edit | Su Jianxun

36Kr learned that on January 26, 2022, Baidu's Jidu Automobile announced the completion of nearly $400 million A round of financing, which was jointly increased by Baidu and strategic partner Geely.

After the financing is completed, Jidu said that it will continue to accelerate the process of research and development and mass production, the first automotive robot concept car will be released at the Beijing Auto Show in April this year, and the mass production model will be launched in 2023.

This is the second financing that Jidu Automobile has received since its inception. In March 2021, Jidu was officially established and received more than 300 million US dollars in start-up capital. In October, a new round of financing was obtained, which is enough to see how fast the car is burning money.

It is understood that Jidu Automobile plans to invest 50 billion yuan in the next 5 years. Xia Yiping of Jidu Automobile previously said that part of the 50 billion yuan came from Baidu Group, and the other part came from social capital. However, in the A round of financing, Baidu and Geely are still "injecting blood" into Jidu.

Jidu's first car robot concept car appearance

At present, jidu's self-developed electronic and electrical architecture JET1.0, as well as SOA, automatic driving system, core computing power platform, and related sensors are further iterating towards the mass production state. Among them, in the field of intelligent driving that the industry is concerned about, Jidu has successfully integrated the automatic driving functions of the urban domain and the high-speed domain, and said that it can provide users with a complete automatic driving experience at the time of delivery, rather than providing it through OTA after delivery.

Previously, Jidu also announced some of the product design styles and brand logos of its mass-produced models. In addition, the design of interiors and exteriors and parts of mass-produced models has gradually entered the stage of mass production mold development.

Jidu said that the successful completion of the new round of financing will help accelerate the research and development and mass production process of automotive robots. In the future, Jidu will increase the introduction and training of cutting-edge talents in related fields such as high-level automatic driving, smart cockpit, and intelligent manufacturing; accelerate the construction of the system for the development and operation of users in the intelligent automobile market, and ensure that the first automotive robot products of Jidu will be presented to the market and consumers in 2023.