The Mobility House, the German provider of energy storage and electric vehicle charging products has successfully completed its C4 financing round of 48.5M€ in November.

This round was financed by historical investors only with a participation of the Alliance Ventures.

The fund will be used for its technology development and to expand their market position in the field of smart charging and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Electric vehicles can stabilize the electric grid and temporarily store renewable energy. This promotes the expansion and integration of renewable energy. The company’s recently announced start of trading on the European Power Exchange EPEX SPOT SE signals another important step towards the intelligent integration of the mobility and electricity market.

Link to website

Alliance Ventures welcomes two new interns since beginning of September: Nicolas MATHIEU and Capucine DOURY.

On her side, Capucine did two 6-month internships last year, one in a business law cabinet and another in an M&A firm.

Before joining the team, Nicolas had the opportunity to work in the public innovation ecosystem and in a digital services consulting company.

They are now very excited to join the team and bring their contribution to the Alliance.

Alliance Ventures’ 5 Innovation Territories

Alliance Ventures focuses its strategic investments over 5 Innovation Territories which have been closely tracked since 2018:

• New Mobility
• Autonomous Driving
• Electric Vehicle, Cleantech & Energy
• Connected Servicess
• Enterprise 2.0

Our insights on the Autonomous Driving Innovation Ecosystem

We would like to share our vision and analysis of each Innovation Territory, focusing now on Autonomous Driving in which we categorized Manufacturers, Perception sensors and algorithms, Mobility Many-Core Chip suppliers, AI for decision making, Incidentology, Explainable AI for ADAS and more. The results presented below have been found from our internal data, monitored from 2018 to 2021.

While investments in Autonomous Driving startups have been stable in number of fundraising rounds, they have been especially strong over the first semester of 2020, reaching $5.5B, almost half the investments recorded between January 2018 and June 2021. Within this ecosystem, startups from the United States have focused 64% of those amounts with Waymo raising $2.25B. As we have seen in the New Mobility sector, in Autonomous Driving China has the largest median raised money per Autonomous Driving startup ($100M) far ahead of the US ($17M).

We observed an interesting trend in the distribution of the series over the period. Seed and Series A were the most common in 2018 (over 80% of Series in Autonomous Driving. However since 2019, investments amounts have been starting to focus more and more on larger rounds with Series C+ now having all the money focused on them ($1.5B out of $1.7B in the first semester of 2021).

When we take an even closer look within Autonomous Driving which sub-categories get the largest focus, we found out that in the top 3 Manufacturers (67% in amount raised), Perception sensors and algorithms (24%) and Many-core chip suppliers (9%) have raised the most money

Included in these amounts are some major success stories like our portfolio startup Weride that raised a 257M€ Series C in May 2021 including 30M€ from Alliance Ventures, reaching a post-money valuation of close to 2.8B€. The American Autonomous Driving manufacturer Waymo also raised an astonishing $2.2B in 2020.

Sources: Pitchbook, Crunchbase, Axios, Strictky VC Newsletter, Trucks Newsletter

Usable image for the article online:

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PORTFOLIO NEWS

China-based autonomous driving startup WeRide announced in Summer 2021 that it will deepen joint development with Nissan of autonomous driving technology for the Chinese market. The announcement comes as the company raised $310 million to reach a valuation of $3.3 billion.

Led by founder Tony Han, the company is developing Level 4 autonomous standard, in which the vehicle can manage all aspects of driving under most circumstances without human intervention.

WeRide announced in September 2021 that it will begin developing self-driving vans for urban logistics services in collaboration with manufacturer JMC and delivery company ZTO Express.

“We’re seeing that the line between passenger vehicle and city logistics vehicle is disappearing,” Tony Han, CEO of WeRide, told CNBC on Thursday. “This is a self-driving vehicle. If you put a seat in it, it can serve as a robotaxi car. If you put a cabinet in it, it’s really a logistics car.”

This news make the headlines as WeRide reaches 10 million kilometers of autonomous driving on  open roads, of which the mileage of fully unmanned driving exceeded 2.5 million kilometers. WeRide was able to achieve this milestone by continuously testing and operating its self-driving fleets. Over the previous four years, the company has grown its fleet to over 300 vehicles in China and the United States.

ABOUT WERIDE

Founded in 2017 by Tony Han together with a group of talented individuals, WeRide.ai has emerged as the leading autonomous driving company aiming to achieve large-scale, commercial deployment of fully L4 autonomous vehicles for the public. WeRdi.ai is committed to using artificial intelligence to deliver fully autonomous vehicles that operate without human intervention to perceive the environment and deliver a safe, robust, and convenient Mobility as a Service. WeRide.ai is a privately held company headquartered in Guangzhou, with offices in Sunnyvale, Beijing and Anqing. For more information, visit www.weride.ai.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry, whose member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. This strategic alliance is among the industry leaders in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.

ABOUT ALLIANCE VENTURES

Alliance Ventures is the strategic venture capital fund of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, the world’s largest automotive alliance. The fund, launched in 2018 and co-located in Amsterdam, Paris and the Silicon-Valley, plans to invest to support open innovation. Alliance Ventures targets technology and business model innovation in new mobility, autonomous driving, connected services, EV & energy and enterprise 2.0. By drawing on expertise and business opportunities from across the world’s largest automotive alliance, the fund makes strategic investments at all start-up stages and incubates new automotive entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of next-generation systems for the automotive industry.

PRESS RELEASE – October 31, 2018

Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and WeRide.ai to increase presence in Chinese autonomous vehicle services

Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has become the lead strategic investor of WeRide.ai (formerly JingChi.ai), China’s leading autonomous driving company focused on L4 self-driving technology, following completion of the company’s Series A funding.

The investment in WeRide.ai is the first investment in China and part of the Alliance Ventures strategy to support entrepreneurs and start-ups at the cutting edge of next-generation automotive technology.

As a result of the Alliance Ventures support, WeRide.ai will become the first Chinese start-up specializing in L4 autonomous driving to receive investment from and form strategic partnership with a global automotive group.

François Dossa, Alliance Global Vice President, Ventures and Open innovation, said: “Our goal at Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi is to develop mobility solutions for all. We aim to introduce autonomous mobility in key markets such as China, so we are delighted to be supporting WeRide.ai as it pioneers such full autonomous systems for the demanding Chinese market-place.”

Tony Han, CEO and co-founder of WeRide.ai said, “On top of financial investment, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and WeRide.ai will also form deep technical and strategic cooperation at a global scale. We truly believe the next stage of autonomous transportation revolution 2.0 has arrived. WeRide.ai will continue leading the technology revolution and provide relevant and meaningful benefits to everyone.”

WeRide.ai, advised by Morgan Stanley on the latest funding round, is committed to creating autonomous driving technology for China which will dramatically change people’s views of cars, transportation services and urban construction design.

Utilizing the latest investment, WeRide.ai plans to deploy a fleet of 500 autonomous vehicles in 2019, to accumulate 5 million kilometers of actual autonomous driving mileage, and conduct operation and commercialization trials in Guangzhou and Anqing with key partners. Since launching its autonomous trial operations in China, WeRide.ai’s autonomous vehicles have accumulated a total mileage of more than 60,000 kilometers, and served more than 3,000 passengers worldwide.

Pre-A round lead-investor, Qiming Venture Capital participated in the latest round, which was also supported by Hanfor Capital, Atop Capital, Johnson Electric, He Xiaopeng, IDInvest Capital、and OceanIQ Capital..

WeRide.ai, which currently has more than 200 employees worldwide – 70% of whom are engineers, is the first autonomous driving company in China to use 5G network for remote control of a driverless vehicle. The company’s goal is to bring autonomous vehicle operations into Chinese cities by 2020 and become the world’s first large-scale commercial application of autonomous vehicle technology.

ABOUT RENAULT-NISSAN-MITSUBISHI

Groupe Renault, Nissan Motor Company and Mitsubishi Motors represent the world’s largest automotive alliance. It is the longest-lasting and most productive cross-cultural partnership in the auto industry. Together, the partners sold more than 10.6 million vehicles in nearly 200 countries in 2017. The member companies are focused on collaboration and maximizing synergies to boost competitiveness. They have strategic collaborations with other automotive groups, including Germany’s Daimler and China’s Dongfeng. This strategic alliance is the industry leader in zero-emission vehicles and is developing the latest advanced technologies, with plans to offer autonomous drive, connectivity features and services on a wide range of affordable vehicles.

www.alliance-2022.com
www.media.renault.com
www.nissan-newsroom.com
www.mitsubishi-motors.com/en/newsrelease/

ABOUT WeRide.ai

Founded in 2017 by Tony Han together with a group of talented individuals, WeRide.ai has emerged as the leading autonomous driving company aiming to achieve large-scale, commercial deployment of fully L4 autonomous vehicles for the public. WeRdi.ai is committed to using artificial intelligence to deliver fully autonomous vehicles that operate without human intervention to perceive the environment and deliver a safe, robust, and convenient Mobility as a Service. WeRide.ai is a privately held company headquartered in Guangzhou, with offices in Sunnyvale, Beijing and Anqing.
www.weride.ai