domeet webmaster

It is no longer news that SoftBank will invest in Didi’s autonomous driving company.

In July last year, the US technology media The Information had spoiled ahead of schedule: Didi is negotiating with its largest shareholder, SoftBank and other potential investors, on the financing of autonomous driving business.

And this time (March 24), The information broke the news again: “SoftBank is about to finalize a $ 300 million investment in Didi Autopilot.”

If this investment is finalized, it means that SoftBank will complete its autonomous driving layout in China by injecting Didi.

01 Is Didi the best choice for Softbank?

The relationship between Didi and SoftBank dates back to 2015.

In January 2015, SoftBank invested in the US $ 600 million Kuaihai taxi at that time. One month later, Didi and Kuaiai merged. In 2017, Didi successively obtained Softbank’s total investment of US $ 8 billion in two separate occasions.

If this investment of US $ 300 million is finalized, it will be the fourth investment of SoftBank.

In the field of autonomous driving, Softbank and Toyota are very closely tied to their “old partners.”

An example is that the vision funds owned by Toyota and SoftBank are co-investors of Uber, Uber’s autonomous driving unit ATG, and China’s ride-hailing giant Didi.

In October 2018, Toyota and SoftBank formed a joint venture, Monet. Among them, Softbank holds 51% and Toyota holds 49%. In this joint venture, Uber and Didi are their partners.

But this time, why didn’t SoftBank pull Toyota?

In April 2019, on the eve of Uber’s listing, Toyota, in conjunction with Softbank and Denso, invested $ 1 billion in Uber ATG, Uber’s autonomous driving unit.

The heart of the car heard that Toyota once intended to copy the operating mode of investing in Uber ATG to China, which is the strategic investment of Didi’s autonomous driving department.

However, after Didi’s separation of its autonomous driving division in August 2019, Toyota did not express its investment intentions-Toyota’s $ 600 million, and the investment target was Didi Chuxing, not Didi Autonomous Driving. .

In the second half of 2018, Toyota had talked with Roadstar, a self-driving company that was not yet a “scattered” automaker at the time, and planned to invest in the latter. But then everyone knows that Roadstar ended dismally because of the founder’s internal strife. Toyota, through a series of inspections and technical cooperation, finally decided to invest in two Chinese autonomous driving companies, Pony.ai and Momenta.

As for SoftBank, a person familiar with the matter revealed that because Waymo and Cruise are currently unable to enter China, the internal conclusion of SoftBank is that it must invest in an autonomous driving company in China. But if you invest in an independent company, you need to sort out the associations with Didi, Cruise and even Manbang.

There is an unproven slogan: SoftBank investors have called Didi, Manbang and Uber together, “You three are all going to drive autonomously. Isn’t this burning my money three times? You guys Can’t use Cruise’s technology? “

But what about reality?

In the Chinese market, Didi has a wide range of travel scenarios and data collection is more convenient, so it has a “bigger win.”

Didi CEO Cheng Wei once said that the most valuable resource accumulated through the taxi fight is data.

According to Didi statistics: Didi adds more than 108 TB of daily trajectory data, more than 40 billion path planning requests and 15 billion daily average positioning, and 4875 TB of data per day.

What is the concept of 4875TB? That’s the equivalent of 1 million 5GB Blu-ray movies.

Cheng Wei believes that the business model of taxiing is destined to be based on operating big data.

So you can also understand that one of Didi’s greatest advantages in the development of autonomous driving technology is the huge amount of traffic big data that Didi has.

02 Two stages of Didi’s autonomous driving development

Didi ’s autonomous driving research began in 2016.

In April 2016, with the addition of academic bull He Xiaofei to the public for the first time, Didi will upgrade the Machine Learning Research Institute to Didi Research Institute. At the same time, He Xiaofei, an AI scientist, was announced as the first dean.

At this stage, He Xiaofei formed Didi’s autonomous driving team, aiming at L4 level autonomous driving and completely unmanned driving.

But at that time, in Didi’s caliber, He Xiaofei was responsible for “didi research institute and big data team building”, and said nothing about “autonomous driving team”.

Didi also later brought in a visionary Yang Qingxiong to serve as the senior director of Didi’s autonomous driving team, focusing on vision-based autonomous driving systems.

During this period, Didi’s attitude towards autonomous driving was “very low-key.”

Until July 2016, at the awards ceremony of the first Didi Ditech Algorithm Contest, Zhang Di, the CTO of Didi, clearly stated: “Unmanned vehicles are a major strategic layout for Didi. Soon there will be unmanned vehicles on the road. Didi The self-driving car team will be led by He Xiaofei, Dean of the Didi Research Institute.

This is Didi’s first clear statement on the layout of autonomous driving.

Later, with the successive departure of He Xiaofei and Yang Qingxiong, the development of Didi autonomous driving has entered the second stage.

During this period, Didi’s autonomous driving was still progressing in a low-key and orderly manner.

At the end of September 2017, Didi established Suzhou Didi Travel Technology Co., Ltd. The legal representative is Zheng Jianqiang. This company is mainly responsible for Didi’s autonomous driving business.

In mid-November 2018, Didi Travel changed its business scope and added “design, research and development, testing, technical capital, and technical services of smart cars and their on-board equipment and parts.”

In November 2017, Didi established a map company, DidikeZhang Bo, the co-founder and CTO of Didi Taxi, is the legal representative of the company.

By August 2019, Didi officially announced that it will split its autonomous driving department and upgrade it to an independent company, focusing on autonomous driving research and development, product applications and related business development.

The CEO of the newly established autonomous driving company is also served by Didi CTO Zhang Bo, and Yuan Shun is the COO of Meng Xing, the executive director of the fund.

Subsequently, Wei Junqing, the former vice president of Anbofu, became the CTO of Didi Autonomous Driving Company and reported to Zhang Bo. Jia Zhaoyin, the head of the US team and Zheng Jianqiang, the head of the Chinese team, reported to Wei Junqing.

At this point, Didi’s core management team for autonomous driving has basically formed. Today, Didi’s autonomous driving team is between 300-400 people and has 4 offices in China and the United States.

03 What is the estimated value of Didi’s autonomous driving?

For Didi’s independent autonomous driving company, there have been two kinds of speculations before:

• Like Uber, you need to separate the money-burning department before the IPO;

• Didi needs financing through independent companies to make up for the R & D funding gap.
  

  In August last year, Zhang Bo gave an “alternative” explanation: “The establishment of an independent company is to deepen cooperation with the upstream and downstream of the automotive industry chain, so as to attract more resources to promote and accelerate autonomous driving technology. / p>

  In his view, achieving this goal requires the formation of an industrial alliance, which has four key resources:

  • Didi shared travel service;

  • Automated driving technology;

  • Auto manufacturers;

  • Enough capital support.
    

    Among them, “adequate capital support” also reflects the significance of financing for autonomous driving research and development. By financing in the name of an independent company, Didi Autopilot can also win more valuable allies for itself.

    Of course, as new capital comes in, the valuations of these companies have skyrocketed:

    Waymo, after receiving $ 2.25 billion in investment, quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Waymo’s valuation reached $ 30 billion.

    GM ’s autonomous driving division, Cruise, has received a valuation of $ 19 billion after accepting investments from SoftBank and Honda.

    Uber ATG, an autonomous driving company spun off from Uber, has reached a valuation of US $ 7.25 billion after obtaining US $ 1 billion in financing from Toyota, SoftBank and Denso.

    Ford’s self-driving company Argo AI is valued at approximately $ 7 billion after receiving Volkswagen investment.

    In April of this year, Pony, a self-driving company from China, received a $ 400 million investment from Toyota, with a post-investment valuation of $ 3 billion.

    After this round of financing, what is the valuation of Didi Autonomous Company?

    Car Heart heard a saying: $ 2 billion.