Autonomous Delivery Company Rino.ai Raises Over $7 Million in Pre A+ Round of Financing

Rino.ai, an unmanned delivery company, announced on Thursday that it had completed a Pre A + round of financing and raised 50 million yuan ($7.84 million) in the deal. Investors in this round include Seekdource, Chang’an Capital and Costone Capital. Previous shareholder Linear Capital also joined the investment round while Yuanyi Capital acted as the exclusive financial consultant.

The funds raised in this round will be used for two main purposes: one is to implement unmanned delivery operations in more cities and expand the company’s fleet size. The other point is to increase investment in technology research and development to adapt to more open road situations. Zhu Lei, CEO of Rino.ai, said, “Our goal is to realize the daily operation of 5,000 unmanned vehicles on open roads within 5 years starting in 2022.”

Founded in April 2019, Rino.ai is a company dedicated to developing unmanned distribution solutions and providing normal operations of unmanned vehicles. In 2020, Rino.ai officially launched commercial operations for supermarket deliveries. At present, the company’s unmanned delivery fleet has been tested and operated in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen and other cities. The current daily operation of the company’s fleet is still in the low double digits.

Rino.ai is also involved in promoting the usage of fully unmanned technology in a variety of delivery situations. The company’s next focus will be to implement unmanned deliveries on a larger scale.

The company will continue to conduct research and development in two fields: one is to continuously improve its algorithm capabilities in testing and operations while also furthering fully unmanned technology in more complex environments and situations. The other point will be to ensure the consistency and stability of the company’s autonomous driving software and hardware systems during operations.

Since the autumn of 2020, Rino.ai has been working with Yonghui Superstores and has successively launched ten unmanned delivery cars in Anting, Jiading District, Shanghai, providing unmanned delivery services for communities 3 to 5 kilometers near the superstore. Since September last year, the company’s unmanned delivery vehicles have been in operation, and have met Yonghui Superstores’ single store business demands.

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In July 2021, Rino.ai reached an agreement with Dada Dada Group to build a delivery platform so that consumers can take part in “hourly delivery” unmanned delivery services by placing orders through retail platforms such as JD Daojia.