Chinese Autonomous Driving Company Holomatic Completes B1 Round of Financing
Holomatic, an autonomous driving technology company, announced today that it has completed the B1 round of financing with investors including Tongfang Investment, Yulin Investment and NavInfo of Baiyue Group.
Ni Kai, founder and CEO of Holomatic, said, “The fresh fund will be used to improve the company’s delivery ability. We will continue to invest in R&D of autonomous driving and the long-term development of the company.”
Founded in 2017, Holomatic has spared no effort to develop an autonomous driving system that utilize artificial intelligence and self-driving technology. Ni Kai said that installing the L2 + self-driving system in cars will enable Holomatic to collect large amounts of data in a timely manner, which helps upgrade algorithms and expand the driving areas, allowing for a more accurate and efficient use of autonomous driving technology.
At present, Holomatic is in the stage of installing its autopilot system in passenger cars.
Since last year, Holomatic has been applying the system in a variety of situations, including along highways and unmanned parking spaces. Ni Kai said that while meeting the needs of mass production, Holomatic plans to offer a more user-friendly experience wherein driverless cars are able to operate in most situations.
Notably still, Holomatic announced today that Jiang Jingfang, former senior vice president of Bosch, joined Holomatic as senior vice president and partner. Jiang joined Bosch Group in 2000 and served as the head and senior vice president of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) business line in China in early 2013. Industry insiders commented that the application of ADAS made by Jiang and her team has led to the development of ADAS in China, and as a result, she has garnered a highly respected reputation in the industry.
Jiang will be directly in charge of the mass production of Holomatic’s autonomous driving products. She said, “While doing what I’m good at and taking what I have learnt in previous positions, I hope to keep exposing myself to new things in a new platform, and grow together with Holomatic in developing Chinese autonomous driving technology.”
Apart from enlarging its team of senior executives, Holomatic has also made some progress in related business development and has gathered more financial support.
Holomatic announced that it has reached an agreement with Guangzhou Automobile Research Institute to provide automatic driving system for GAC’s vehicles. Passenger cars equipped with the system are expected to enter the market as early as 2022. This means that the automatic driving system developed by Holomatic will be rolled out on a larger scale.
Ni Kai believes that the passenger car market shows huge potential as automatic driving systems are likely to be installed in hundreds of millions of cars over the next decade. The company will then be able to use the data generated to accurately map how the cars respond to a variety of road conditions (and make safety adjustments as needed). “Developing autopilot technology is a marathon, and start-ups can’t take it as a sprint. Holomatic’s name comes from the Chinese character “移” , or ‘move’ in English. We are confident that Holomatic will work steadily and will eventually realize the complete use of driverless technology.”
