Behind Weimar's 10 billion financing is Baidu's determination to win the AI era

Text | Wei Qiyang

Source | Intelligent Relativity (aixdlun)

Following the listing of Weilai and Ideal, Xiaopeng Motors recently went to the United States to submit the prospectus, and Weimar Motors also accelerated the pace of listing.

On September 22, Weimar Automobile announced that it has completed a D round of financing totaling 10 billion yuan, which is also the largest single round of financing in the history of new automakers.

This round of financing was jointly led by Shanghai State-owned Investment Platform and SAIC Motor, with Baidu and Haina Asia Venture Capital Fund (SIG) continuing to participate. National asset industry funds from Hubei, Anhui, Suzhou, Hunan, SDIC, Guangzhou, etc., as well as Xinxin, Ziguang, Hongta Group, Agile, Yingke and other institutions followed suit.

Shen Hui, the founder, chairman and CEO of Weimar Motors, said: "The completion of the D round of financing reflects investors’ optimism about the prospects of the smart new energy vehicle industry, and the company’s technological innovation positioning, long-term development strategy, and outstanding The core team, leading-edge technology in the industry, and a high degree of recognition of the core value concept of'inclusive technology and detonating the mainstream'. Participating in this round of financing are all powerful players in various fields and are willing to develop together with Weimar Value investor."

At the same time, a source revealed that Weimar will apply for the Science and Technology Innovation Board at the end of September and be listed early next year.

1. Four Internet giants re-invested in four new forces, Baidu is the largest external shareholder of Weimar

After Weimar's D round of financing, Baidu is still Weimar's largest institutional shareholder. So far, the top players of new car-building forces have also completed their own capital bundling with technology giants.

According to the financial report, after Weilai's additional issuance in August this year, Tencent holds 12.6% of shares and 19.2% of the voting rights; Meituan CEO Wang Xing and Meituan Company hold 23.3% of the shares in Ideal and have 8% of the voting rights; The prospectus of Peng Motors shows that after Xiaopeng Motors goes public, Ali holds 13.3% of the shares and 15% of the voting rights.

Baidu has experienced multiple rounds of financing from Weimar.

In November 2017, Weimar's B round of financing was led by Baidu Capital, followed by Baidu Group, SIG Hainer Asia, and Amoeba Capital.

In March 2019, Weimar raised RMB 3 billion in Series C financing, and Baidu once again increased its size. This round was led by Baidu Group, followed by Taihang Industrial Fund and Linear Capital.

After Weimar's D round of financing, Baidu remained the largest institutional shareholder. So far, the pattern of four Internet companies re-injecting four new forces has stabilized.

At present, Weimar’s main sales model has two models. One is the EX5, which was launched in September 2018, with a subsidy of 150,000, and has delivered about 34,000 vehicles; the other is launched in November 2019, positioning The high-end five-seat medium-sized SUV Weimar EX6 Plus launched a six-seat version in August this year. It is now in a period of brand building and sales ramping.

In this way, with the product pricing of 300,000 upwards by the new forces, Weimar’s product strategy is extremely "friendly to the people", and it is pushed back to the marketing level. The lightly equipped Weimar will also be more calm in the "run volume". Once the customer's basic plan is determined, Weimar may have greater development potential.

 

In addition to the capital-level cooperation between Weimar and Baidu, they have also found many integration points in technology.

Baidu launched the Apollo plan in 2017 to jointly develop L3 and L4 autonomous driving solutions with car companies. Although Weimar had no product launch at the time, it was the closest to Baidu.

At CES in 2019, Baidu and Weimar announced the establishment of the "Weima & Apollo Smart Car Joint Technology R&D Center". The two parties cooperated in the development of intelligent driving systems, which will be used in Weimar mass-produced models, and will be put into production in 2021.

At Baidu World 2020 not long ago, Baidu and Weimar jointly demonstrated the AVP autonomous parking technology that will be carried on the new Weimar vehicle next year. It finds a fixed parking space under unmanned operation and automatically parks and locks the vehicle.

Similar to the product price positioning, Weimar’s technical landing route also starts from the pain points of users, and is a practitioner of "inclusive technology", so that the latest technology can be popularized to consumers in the fastest and most economical way, so that more people can experience To the experience upgrade and value dividend brought by technology.

2. What kind of chess did Baidu play after continuing to invest in Weimar?

Weimar is an important partner of Baidu in many layouts of autonomous driving and smart cars. From the perspective of God, we can find that Baidu's layout is divided into two layers, inside and outside. Among them, Apollo is the leader of the technology peak. , To promote the evolution of Baidu's autonomous driving technology has always maintained a high-speed forward; externally, through excellent investment capabilities, it continues to expand Baidu's autonomous driving territory, and continues to enhance Baidu's ecological link capabilities.

In Baidu World 2020, Apollo showed the outside world its latest developments in three aspects: autonomous driving, intelligent vehicle linkage and intelligent transportation.

1. Excellent landing results, a rare all-rounder

Through the demonstration of autonomous driving with unmanned main drivers, Apollo has shown three pictures of "Old AI Driver", "Front-loaded Mass Production Car", and "5G Cloud Driving" to the unmanned era, representing the highest standards of the global autonomous driving industry And the trump card of the threshold.

In terms of smart car connectivity, Apollo Xiaodu, which has smart voice interaction capabilities, has cooperated with 60+ mainstream auto brands around the world, with more than 500 models on the market. According to the "China Smart Connected Market Trend Report" recently released by IHS Markit, 2020 The number of vehicles carried by Xiaodu in the field of intelligent networked vehicles has ranked first in the world.

In the field of intelligent transportation, Apollo's intelligent transportation solution "ACE Transportation Engine" has landed in nearly 20 cities across the country, becoming the number one player in the new infrastructure of intelligent transportation. Robin Li even predicted that within five years, China's first-tier cities will no longer need purchase restrictions and traffic restrictions, relying on the improvement of traffic efficiency. Within 10 years, the congestion problem can be basically solved.

From the perspective of the release of Apollo’s own internal capabilities, Baidu has accumulated sufficient leading advantages in the field of autonomous driving and smart cars, and has also constructed a very competitive moat. However, it is very important for “climbing Mount Everest” (realizing driverless driving). ) In this business, relying solely on Apollo's internal strength is obviously not enough. The external capital layout has become another main line of Baidu.

Baidu's investment in Weimar can be regarded as a fruit of Baidu's foreign investment layout.

2. "Technology + Capital": It is not only Weimar's two-wheel drive engine, but also the logic of Baidu's investment in Weimar

At the beginning of its establishment, Weimar determined the goal of not just being a car company, and proposed a "three-step" strategy: the first step is to be the number one player in smart electric vehicles; the second step is to grow into a data-driven smart hardware company; The third step is to be a service provider for smart travel.

Before this round of financing, Weimar released IdeaL4's new technology strategy, consisting of Intelligent Cockpit (the smart cockpit that understands Chinese users best), Digital Architecture (the industry's first new self-developed digital architecture), EIC (super platform-based three-electric system), Autonomous Driving (autonomous driving core skills) is composed of the "four major components", and together with intelligent allies such as Qualcomm, Baidu, Ziguang and Xinxin to create a "future smart travel terminal", forming a "people-vehicle-environment" intelligent technology ecosystem ring.

 

Shen Hui, the founder, chairman and CEO of Weimar Motors, also stated that in the next 3 to 5 years, Weimar Motors will invest 20 billion yuan to gather 3,000 global top engineers to create "EC travel smart terminals" that are more in line with the preferences of Chinese users. .

Regarding the purpose of this round of financing, Weimar made it clear that the financing will be used for smart technology research and development, brand building, digital marketing and channel expansion, etc., smart technology research and development is the first, while strengthening comprehensive capacity building.

In this way, Weimar Motors has very deep technical genes and certain technical capabilities. With the boost of capital, it has actually formed a "technology + capital" dual-engine drive model.

It is a coincidence that Baidu's investment in Weimar has also taken a dual-engine path of "technology + capital".

In addition to investing money, Baidu also exports technical capabilities to Weimar. As mentioned above, in the AVP autonomous parking technology jointly developed by Apollo and Weimar, Apollo’s algorithm plays a key role. Relying on the AVP dedicated vehicle computing platform with super computing power, in the future, it can also create a parking system through intelligent cloud interconnection. Field autonomous driving application ecology, access to services including automatic charging, unmanned car wash, unmanned express delivery and other services.

We can notice that all of the above are realized on consumer-grade mass-produced cars, which obviously has more room for imagination, which can create real value for Baidu and Weimar, through the creation of such benchmark products , Can further consolidate the two leading positions in the field of autonomous driving and smart cars.

3. After investing in Weimar, what surprises will Baidu Apollo have?

In fact, Baidu's capital layout is not limited to Weimar, nor is it limited to a field of smart car manufacturing. In the field of smart transportation related to autonomous driving, Baidu Apollo's capital layout is more "sharp."

At the end of 2019, Baidu successively adopted cooperation methods such as resource and technology complementation with Shanxi Traffic Control Group, China Mobile Communications Group Shanxi Co., Ltd., and Shaoxing City Construction Investment Group to promote smart transportation and vehicle-road collaboration across the country in the field of intelligent transportation. Project implementation; and jointly established Hunan Apollo Zhixing Technology Co., Ltd. with Changsha Pioneer Industry Investment Co., Ltd. and Hunan Xiangjiang Intelligent Technology Innovation Center Co., Ltd.

After entering 2020, Apollo's intelligent transportation ecology continues to make efforts, and partners such as Zhengzhou Tianmai, Yinjiang Co., Ltd., Hisense Technology, Shanghai Electronics Technology, and Datang Gaohong have joined.

So far, Apollo has introduced more than 210 eco-partners, including almost all mainstream automakers, first-tier component suppliers, chip companies, sensor companies, transportation integrators, travel companies, etc., covering everything from hardware to software. Complete industrial chain.

The advantage of such a layout is that it can collaborate with more high-quality resources when constructing intelligent transportation projects, which is conducive to the creation of benchmark projects. Baidu Apollo can win the bid for the new intelligent transportation infrastructure project of Guangzhou Huangpu over 100 million yuan on August 28. Baidu The external ecological linking ability is a very important bonus item.

 

Returning to Baidu's investment in Weimar, Baidu Apollo will not only gain returns from the investment market, but also through the implementation of AVP autonomous parking technology, it will create a commercial model, thereby accelerating the formation of the autonomous driving business model and driving Apollo in the entire The concentrated outbreak of the industry, more meaningfully, showed the outside world its determination to win the AI ​​era.

We can see that internally, Baidu spares no effort to support Apollo's tireless "climbing Mount Everest"; externally, Baidu not only contributes money, but also technology, through the dual output of "technology + capital", empowering new car-building like Weimar The forces, if they want to climb to the top, must draw on the "brothers" and join hands.

We can view it as the open mind that Baidu has always insisted on, and we can also glimpse Baidu's firm belief in the era of autonomous driving. At this time, Baidu Apollo has further established its leading position in the intelligent driving industry and has more room for imagination in the decisive AI era.

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