Which autonomous driving companies are you optimistic about?

The first echelon There are two main types of the first echelon:

Momenta, the first company, is relatively low-key, but the team and actual progress are well-known in the industry. They are co-founders of R&D and authors of advanced frameworks in the field of target detection and image recognition, namely, faster R-CNN and ResNet.

In my opinion, Momenta is a seriously underestimated company. Their goal is to build an autonomous driving brain, so they not only took a faster-looking L3 road, but also developed autonomous driving above L4. In actual progress, Momenta first L3, cooperated with the suppliers of the car factory, took Tesla mode, and then L4. Momenta was also blessed by the industrial capital of Daimler and Weilai Automobile, the parent companies of Mercedes-Benz. Relying on capital+resources, it may be possible to get through the business closed loop of technical solutions faster.

This "closed loop" has also been further recognized by capital in the last six months. It is said that Momenta has accumulated more than $200 million in financing, and its valuation exceeds $654.38+0 billion. The speed and progress of promotion are amazing.

The second company is Pony.ai, which is a joint venture between Ma Xiao Star, Peng Jun and architectural leaders. Their current valuation is close to $654.38 billion, and they have also obtained the license of Beijing Road Test. At the same time, they have reached a strategic cooperation with GAC, recruited a group of big cows, and set up an autonomous driving research institute.

Technically, Pony.ai began to use 32-line lidar, reaching the effect of 64 lines or even 128 lines. Of course, the gossip that attracts more attention is the leadership of the building. There have been rumors before that the leader changed his mind and left Xiaoma to join Didi, becoming the CTO of Didi Takeaway. Some even witnessed the frequent entry and exit of leaders.

However, the fact is that Didi Takeaway and Pony.ai live in the same building.

In short, in the past six months, Pony.ai and Momenta have flashed a position.

The valuation of the second echelon of the second echelon fluctuated around $600 million, 2-3 times higher than the previous round.

The first is Chi Jing Science and Technology. Since Chi Jing started his business, the momentum is surging, and the team division of labor is relatively reasonable. Especially for this industry where technology is as important as landing, and products and resources are equally important, the role of former CEO Wang Jin is not critical.

However, Baidu's precise attack had an unbearable impact on Chi Jing. Fortunately, after the change of Wang Jinzhi, Chi Jing quickly passed the turbulent period, attracting a number of senior talents to join, and the company re-entered the stage of stable development.

RoadStar.ai, another company, recently announced a round of financing of $654.38+$28 million, with a post-investment valuation of about $500 million. They are an unmanned car company operated by Baidu Car Factory, focusing on autonomous driving above L4. However, the financing started at the beginning of last year was not smooth sailing. Now the original plan of $40 million led by Shuanghu Capital seems to be more inclined to another company, but then the company suddenly changed, the loyal wife of RoadStar.ai

In addition to autonomous driving, there are several unmanned vehicle companies related to freight transportation in this echelon.

Tucson Future officially announced a round of $55 million financing led by Composite Capital Management at the end of last year. It is said that the post-investment valuation reached $450 million. Tucson's latest appearance in the future is the application of unmanned trucks in the port, which means that Tucson has entered the stage of commercial trial operation, but there is no more financing progress to share.

In the field of freight auto-driving, the first half of 20 18 was probably the Feibu technology founded by He. Feibu Technology focuses on light truck freight, and the plan includes intercity and high-speed scenes, and may first introduce advanced assisted driving related to freight. Another reason for their concern is that full-stack technology also includes AI chips specially developed for autonomous driving.

In addition to the third echelon, there are several relatively low-key unmanned vehicle companies with a valuation of 300 million US dollars. However, compared with the last round, it has also improved by more than three times.

Ling Jun Technology, also from Baidu, released a "completely modified" driverless prototype in May. Based on a domestic SUV, Ling Jun realized a set of automatic driving schemes, curves, high-speed scenes, toll stations and so on. It was successfully realized in the road test. The most striking thing is that the unmanned vehicle in Ling Jun "hides" all the sensors, and there is no eye-catching lidar overhead, which may become the goal pursued by the car factory.

Ni Kai, the "old comrade-in-arms" of Yang Wenli, the founder of Ling Jun, has a similar idea. They are the first members of Baidu's unmanned car team. After Ni Kai founded Heduo Technology, he also promoted it with the idea of L4 dimension reduction and L3 application. At present, the financing progress is limited, but I heard that he signed a big order with the car factory.

In addition, Wu Gansha may be a person who has made a fortune. In the first half of this year, there was not much news about science and technology in Shi Yu, but in the aspect of autonomous driving in limited scenes such as unmanned cleaning, car ferry and parking lot, the specific landing cases came one after another, and the news of capital may soon come.

Similar to the landing scene of Shi Yu Science and Technology, the company Cool Wow Robot, which has landed an unmanned sweeping car in Orange Island, Changsha, has also been aggressive in the past two months, and has also found a leader in environmental protection industries such as Zoomlion in Changsha. Recently, Cool Wow announced a series B financing of 65.438+35 billion yuan.

OMT: At the end of the giant's side, synchronize the automatic driving progress of BAT:

Baidu, which started the earliest, accumulated and explored the most, also gained fame and reputation in the industry, but Qilu's departure had a great impact, which not only affected the external development of Apollo, but also affected the mood of Baidu engineers.

At present, Baidu's autonomous driving technology has enabled the "old Baidu" Chen Jingkai. This chief architect is modest and low-key, and has a good internal reputation. He is also trusted by Li Yanhong, but it takes some time to hold the steering wheel of Baidu driverless car. Give an answer.

Tencent, which has made the fastest progress, completed the organizational framework construction at the end of last year and has been digging people around the world this year. L3 and L4 are parallel, and L3 will be the first to launch the product. Moreover, Tencent is headquartered in Shenzhen and got the first road test license in Shenzhen.

Both Alibaba and BAT have the latest layout, and the actual progress is not revealed much. The biggest progress in the past six months is that the team is led by Wang Gang, the chief scientist of Ali Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. At present, the team size is more than 50 people.

Finally, Huawei is also carrying out the layout of autonomous driving, but the progress may be slower-because Huawei is still looking for a leader for the team.

In a word, this is the general trend of the world at present, and it may be decided after half a year, and the most critical time has arrived.