Self-driving truck startup Plus raises extra $220M autonews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from autonews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Plus, a self-driving truck technology company, has made several recent announcements:
The company will use NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip (SoC) in its autonomous driving systems.
A former Navistar exec has joined Plus as chief platform officer.
Plus recently raised $200 million in new funding.
Plus was founded in 2016 and specializes in self-driving technology for large-scale autonomous transport. The company is starting mass production of its autonomous driving system for heavy trucks this year.
According to a press release, the company will expand its feature set and operating design domain over time through over-the-air software updates. By working with the NVIDIA engineering team to further evolve its system, Plus will make it possible for trucks powered by its system to achieve fail-operational performance for on-road safety.
Startup Funding: February 2021
In February, several startups emerge from stealth, with one company working on AI inference architectures for the data center and another trying to make lenses thinner by patterning surfaces with tiny structures. Two new Chinese companies are trying to expand the country’s semiconductor design ecosystem with GPUs and interface IP. Plus, a maker of AI chips for ADAS draws another massive round this month as we take a look at 22 startups that collectively raised over $1.2B.
Semiconductors & design
GPU startup
Moore Threads raised an undisclosed amount of pre-A Series funding (stated as billions RMB 1.0B RMB is about $155M) led by
Guotai Junan leads $200m funding in Sequoia-backed truck startup PlusAI
February 18, 2021
Chinese self-driving truck startup PlusAI, Inc., has raked in $200 million in a new funding round to accelerate its global expansion plans.
An earlier Bloomberg report in August 2019 had pegged the valuation of PlusAI at over $1 billion.
The round has been led by Guotai Junan International Holdings, with participation from new investors namely CITIC Private Equity Funds Management (CPE) and Wanxiang International Investment.
A slew of existing investors re-upped in the transaction – these include Sequoia Capital China, US global venture capital firm Mayfield Fund, SoftBank-backed Chinese long-haul truck major Full Truck Alliance (FTA), Lightspeed China Partners, early-stage focused GSR Ventures, state-backed SAIC Motor, and China Growth Capital, the investee said in a WeChat post.
There is quite a bit to get to this week, so let’s charge forward.
Email me at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com to share thoughts, criticisms, opinions or tips. You also can send a direct message to me at Twitter @kirstenkorosec.
Micromobbin’
The spike in electric bike sales was one of the rosier outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, new legislation introduced this past week by U.S. representatives Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) could push sales even higher. The Electric Bicycle Incentive Kickstart for the Environment (E-BIKE) Act proposes creating a consumer tax credit that would cover 30% of the cost of an electric bicycle up to a $1,500 credit. The proposed bill applies to new electric bicycles that cost less than $8,000 and is fully refundable, allowing lower-income workers to claim the credit, according to Panetta’s announcement.