Unmanned Delivery Firm White Rhino Auto Receives Nearly $10 Million in Pre-A Funding
On Thursday, Chinese autonomous driving company White Rhino, announced that it had secured nearly $10 million in Pre-A financing led by Linear Capital.
Founded in April 2019, White Rhino was co-founded by Zhu Lei and Xia Tian, former members of Baidu‘s autonomous driving team. The firm mainly develops full-stack unmanned distribution solutions and provides normal operations of unmanned vehicles. Its driverless vehicles are currently being tested or operated in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu. The company received seed funding and additional investment from Chentao Capital in the early stages of its establishment.
The technological innovation of White Rhino involves two main parts: automatic driving systems and unmanned distribution operations platform.
White Rhino is currently cooperating with supermarkets to implement its products. Since the autumn of 2020, the company has deployed about 10 unmanned delivery cars at the entrance of Yonghui Superstores, China’s leading supermarket operator, at a location in Anting, Jiading, Shanghai.
At present, all the delivery business of Yonghui Superstores in Anting, Shanghai, is completed by White Rhino unmanned distribution vehicles, with a total of orders exceeding 20,000. Zhu Lei told domestic media outlet 36Kr that their cooperation with Yonghui Superstores will expand from Anting and land in other cities. At present, the business is still in the exploratory stage, and the revenue scale will not be disclosed for the time being.
Talking about the Pre-A round of financing, Harry Wang, Founder and CEO of Linear Capital, said: “Autonomous driving technology is gradually becoming mature and practical. The last 3-kilometer logistics in the city represents a trillion-dollar market that is most easily solved by autonomous driving.”
On March 4 this year, White Rhino announced that it had obtained additional investment from Chentao Capital at the beginning of the company’s establishment. The amount of funding was not disclosed, and the money was mainly used for research and development, as well as general operations.
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At present, Chentao Capital has invested in a range of L4-level autonomous driving start-ups in the fields of low-speed unmanned logistics and unmanned mining transportation. Chances are these companies may cooperate in the future.
