On August 8, Black Sesame Intelligence announced the completion of the C+ round of financing led by Wuyuefeng Science and Technology Innovation, Industrial Bank Group, GF Xinde, Hanergy Fund, Beituo Yinuo Capital, Xinding Capital, Road Capital, and Yangtze River Fund. Wait for institutions to follow suit. So far, Black Sesame Smart has completed all C rounds and C+ rounds of financing, with a total fundraising scale of more than 500 million US dollars. After the completion of this round of financing, Black Sesame Intelligence, with sufficient capital blessing, will further enhance the R&D and commercialization capabilities of core technologies, chip products, and comprehensively accelerate the mass production and application of its autonomous driving chips.
The favor of the capital market stems from the emergence of autonomous driving chips
Black Sesame Intelligence has always had the support of giants on its financing road.
In July 2016, Black Sesame Smart completed the A round of financing. The investor is Northern Light Venture Capital, which has total assets under management of more than 30 billion yuan. A year later, the A+ round of financing arrived as scheduled. NIO Capital became the lead investor in this round, and Northern Light Venture Capital and Core Dynamics Investment followed suit, which made Black Sesame Smart start to speed up on this track.
In April 2019, Black Sesame Smart completed nearly $100 million in Series B financing. Junhai Chuangxin became the lead investor in this round of financing of Black Sesame Intelligence, and institutions such as SAIC Group, Northern Lights Venture Capital, China Merchants Venture Capital and other institutions followed. This round of financing was used by Black Sesame Intelligence for the development of autonomous driving domain controller reference design and vehicle-level software integration, etc.
Ko Youngjin, executive director of Junhai Chuangxin, said at the time: “Relying on the founder’s profound image/video processing technology and automotive industry background, Black Sesame is the pioneer of China’s AI chip industrialization, and is expected to become a global leader in this field in the future.” Yang Lei, managing director of Northern Lights Ventures, an investor in three consecutive rounds, said: “Investing in black sesame represents Northern Light’s vision for end-to-end intelligence – more and more intelligence will be pushed to the front in the future, and front-end intelligence is very important to startups. Good entry opportunity. The core members of Black Sesame have many years of industrial experience and a deep understanding of the consumer electronics and automotive fields. They are the most likely to make China reach the world’s leading level in the field of unmanned driving and intelligent assisted driving. company.”
In the C round of financing completed in 2021, Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Fund became the lead investor, and the post-investment valuation of Black Sesame Intelligence was close to US$2 billion, successfully joining the super unicorn series. Beginning in 2022, Black Sesame Intelligence has obtained a strategic investment from Boyuan Capital, a subsidiary of Bosch, and has become the target of capital pursuit even under the influence of the epidemic.
As the lead investor in the C+ round, Wuyuefeng Kechuang focuses on industrial investment in the fields of next-generation information technology and new energy, and has rich experience in investment, mergers and acquisitions, and listing. Dr. Wu Ping, the founding partner of Wuyuefeng Science and Technology Co., Ltd., said: “Wuyuefeng has been focusing on professional investment in the field of hard technology and semiconductors, and we believe that professionalism can achieve the industry. Now chip computing power has become an important part of the competition in the automotive industry. I am very pleased to see The Huashan No. 2 A1000 series of large-scale computing power vehicle gauge chips developed by Black Sesame Smart have been mass-produced and applied to the car, which is of great significance for consolidating the local industrial chain and supply chain of autonomous driving. I look forward to seeing Black Sesame Smart continue to use The large-scale computing power vehicle-scale chip leads the process of independent innovation of domestic chips.”
Since its establishment, Black Sesame Intelligence has always been a high-quality target in the capital market. This is not only because the founding team has an excellent composite team in the automotive and chip industries, but also because its self-developed core technology has a greater advantage in market competition, and more It is because the autonomous driving chip has already stood on the top of the tuyere.
Intelligent driving will usher in a period of rapid development in the next three to five years. In the era of intelligent driving, the demand for digital applications and digital experience in the car explodes, computing power is one of the main points of competition, and large computing power autonomous driving chips have become a rigid demand. On the other hand, the trend of intelligence and electrification has led to the restructuring of the global auto industry structure, and Chinese self-owned brand car companies have taken the lead. The local ecosystem, including chips, is a powerful guarantee for Chinese car companies to build their competitiveness. It is no wonder that Black Sesame Intelligence is being chased in the capital market.
After the financing, the mass production and application of autonomous driving chips will be fully accelerated
Standing on the tuyere can only ensure that the company has the opportunity to move forward, and how far it can go depends entirely on the core competitiveness of the company.
Black Sesame Intelligence, which focuses on large computing power autonomous driving computing chips and platform technology, has established a complete customer empowerment system.
In terms of hardware, self-developed vehicle-grade image processing ISP, vehicle-grade deep neural network accelerator NPU, Huashan series autonomous driving computing chips, Shanhai artificial intelligence development platform, and Hanhai autonomous driving middleware rank among the top in the market. . The Huashan No. 2 A1000 series chip released by Black Sesame Intelligence is the first mass-produced domestic chip platform that complies with vehicle regulations, has the largest computing power, the strongest performance, and a single chip supports a parking and parking integrated domain controller. It is worth mentioning that Black Sesame Intelligence is also the first autonomous driving chip company in China to collect functional safety expert certification, functional safety process certification, functional safety product certification and vehicle regulation software certification.
In terms of data, which is an important basis for algorithm evolution, Black Sesame Smart Data Best data closed-loop solution includes data closed-loop, edge computing module, data acquisition, data labeling, data enhancement, multi-task training, Shadow Mode multiple modules, forming a data closed-loop As the core, a super ecological application system of smart cars + smart transportation. Not only that, Black Sesame Intelligence also has the ability to mass-produce full-stack perception algorithms, can provide customer algorithm customization services, support third-party algorithm transplantation, and multiple algorithm delivery methods.
Whether the development tool chain and software are complete is an important indicator of the ease of use of the chip. In conjunction with the Huashan series of autonomous driving computing chips, Black Sesame Intelligence has successively released the Shanhai artificial intelligence development platform and the Hanhai autonomous driving middleware platform. The mature tool chain and middleware system support rapid mass production.
Shan Jizhang, founder and CEO of Black Sesame Intelligence, said: “The development of automotive intelligence has provided a boost to the era of high-performance, high-power autonomous driving chips. Thanks to all investors for their trust, recognition and support for Black Sesame Intelligence, we will Continue to improve the research and development capabilities of core technologies and chip products, continuously strengthen its own technological advantages, comprehensively accelerate the commercial application of autonomous driving chips, and further strengthen industrial competitiveness. In this process, as an important part of the local automotive industry supply chain, black sesame Intelligence will contribute more to the development of the domestic autonomous driving industry.”
The commercial application of autonomous driving chips mentioned in the single chapter is the problem that plagues many domestic chip manufacturers, but for the current Black Sesame Intelligence, it has already explored a road of great reference value for other manufacturers.
In May of this year, Black Sesame Intelligence and Jiangqi Group reached a platform-level strategic cooperation. Many mass-produced models of the Sihao brand under Jiangqi Group will be equipped with Huashan No. 2 A1000 series chips, and more models equipped with Huashan No. 2 A1000 series chips. It will also be released in succession. At the same time, Black Sesame Intelligence focuses on L2, L3 ADAS and autonomous driving perception system solutions, and has cooperated with China FAW, Bosch, SAIC, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Dongfeng Yuexiang, Thundersoft, Asia Pacific, Baolong Group, Jingweiheng Run, Junlian Zhixing, Sotorian, Lianyou Technology, etc. have carried out business cooperation.
For Black Sesame Intelligence, technology has never been confined to an ivory tower. Only through continuous iteration and testing in commercialization can it maintain the possibility of continuous progress. Each financing for Black Sesame Intelligence not only means a change in the numbers on the account, but also becomes a booster for the next high-speed start.
media coverage
Investment Community Titanium Media Play IT Home Dongdian Technology
Related events
- Black Sesame Smart completed over US$500 million in financing2022-08-08
- Black Sesame Smart Announces Received Investment from Boyuan Capital2022-01-12
- It is rumored that Xiaomi is considering investing in AI chip maker Black Sesame Smart Technology2021-04-23
- FAW and Black Sesame Intelligent Technology signed a strategic cooperation2019-12-30
- “Black Sesame Intelligent Technology” received nearly $100 million in Series B financing to develop an AI computing platform for autonomous driving2019-04-12
This article is reprinted from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8ij6u9qK5ks
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.