The Chinese autonomous driving technology company HoloMatic announced recently to have completed a C2 round of financing led by Chinese VC GAC Capital and followed by Zhidu Investment and Chaos Investment. So far, the total amount of this C round of financing for HoloMatic has totalled $100 million.
Since being founded in June 2017, HoloMatic has completed five rounds of financing so far. In October 2021, both parties announced that several GAC models would offer HoloMatic’s automatic driving system by 2022. Further, HoloMatic will provide intelligent driving functions for GAC’s Trumpchi and Aion brands, covering high-speed, urban roads and parking.
Heat wave of smart vehicles
For those who do not know, GAC is one of the largest China local automobile groups, with the average annual sales volume exceeding 2 million units in recent years, has two independent brands, GAC Trumpchi and GAC AION. Among them, GAC AION is a blade electric vehicle brand launched by GAC Group in response to the heat wave of smart vehicles. As of October, GAC AION’s cumulative sales volume in 2022 had exceeded 210,000 units, with an average monthly sales volume of more than 30,000 units, ranking among the top 3 electric vehicle brands in China.
In November last year, HoloMatic reached a deep cooperation with GAC Group and received exclusive financing of Series C1 funding from GAC Capital.
Further, the autonomous driving domain controller was independently developed by HoloMatic, also designated by many leading independent brand vehicle companies in 2022, and will be mass-produced and launched in 2023.
AI innovation
With the varied changes in the world economy in recent years and the large-scale popularisation of smart vehicles, the development of the autonomous driving innovation lane has become more pragmatic and more focused on the implementation of technical mass production. Benefiting from the leading AI innovation capability and steady engineering mass production capacity accumulated in the development of the past five years, HoloMatic continues to be concerned and recommended by automobile manufacturers and investment institutions under the industry downturn. The completion of this series of financing can be seen as an achievement against the trend in such a challenging industry situation.
In this regard, Feng Yuan, the general manager of GAC Capital, said: “With excellent technological innovation and solid engineering mass production capacity, HoloMatic and GAC Group are integrating advantageous resources and trying every effort to implement the industrialization of smart vehicles, continuously reducing the mass production cost, and accelerating the technological iteration. Through this series of financing, our cooperation will be further deepened, which also represents our continued high confidence in the development of HoloMatic. GAC Capital will continue integrating resources with HoloMatic in the future to provide more comprehensive industrial empowerment, help to grow rapidly, supply the needs for industrial upgrading and transformation, and continue to promote the high-quality development of the automobile industry in China.”
“The completion of this series C funding is another development milestone ushered in by HoloMatic, which has just celebrated its fifth anniversary,” Kai Ni, founder and CEO of HoloMatic, said. “In such a challenging market situation like now, this series of financing will guarantee the healthy development of HoloMatic. It is a great honour to win the support and recognition of well-known strategic and financial investors such as GAC Capital, ZhiDu Investment and CHAOS Investment, which also represents our common belief in promoting the popularization of autonomous driving mass production and gradually achieving the goal of self-piloting. HoloMatic will continue to exert the advantages of artificial intelligence technology and the experience of excellent engineering mass production accumulated over the years, to provide customers with advanced and efficient autonomous driving R&D services, to improve their innovation capability for creating greater industrial value. Besides, HoloMatic will provide consumers with a reassuring, comfortable and efficient autonomous driving experience, and accelerate the early achievement of the self-piloting era.”
