Autonomous driving company UISEE raises $150m

China's leading autonomous driving firm UISEE announced on Monday that it has raised over 1 billion yuan ($150 million) in its latest round of fundraising with State-owned fund first participating in the round.

It's the first time that National Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrade Fund, a 50.1 billion yuan State-owned fund to promote the country's manufacturing industry, has invest in a self-driving company.

According to the fund, UISEE has apparent advantages in core self-driving technology in software and hardware, with its technologies applied in multiple scenarios including airports, parks, buses, and robo-taxis over the past years.

Founded in 2016, UISEE has been developing the Level 4 autonomous driving and strives to build a safer and more reliable autonomous driving platform that supports "full scene, truly unmanned and all-weather" scenarios.

Level 4 autonomy means that the vehicle can drive autonomously in most conditions without a human driver.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, its business has gained momentum through cooperating with industry leaders such as Changan Minsheng Logistics, FAW Logistics, BASF and Dongfeng Motor. The company said that it achieved a year-on-year sales growth of 150 percent last year.

In September last year, the firm joined hands with SAIC-GM-Wuling to build the first unmanned logistics route in China. As of January, the project has applied over 20 unmanned logistics routes and over 100 fully-unmanned logistics vehicles.