Yunqi Capital | Angel-round project *DeepRoute* raises $100 million in Series C1, accelerating mass production of advanced intelligent driving

On November 5, Yunqi Capital portfolio company DeepRoute, which Yunqi led in its angel round, announced the completion of a $100 million Series C1 strategic funding round. The round was exclusively invested in by a top domestic automaker, with proceeds to be used to strengthen domestic mass production projects, expand overseas business, and provide capital support for exploring Robotaxi commercial operations and developing VLA models and other frontier technologies.

Connecting with the physical world is one of the main directions of current AI development, and a key focus area for Yunqi Capital. DeepRoute is the first company in China to successfully deploy an end-to-end model in production vehicles, and one of the few domestic suppliers capable of providing urban NOA advanced intelligent driving mass production solutions. Currently, over 10,000 mass-produced vehicles equipped with DeepRoute's intelligent driving system have entered the market.

Yunqi has supported DeepRoute since its angel round, witnessing its continuous iteration in technological innovation and commercial partnerships. We are optimistic about its R&D and commercialization prospects in the advanced intelligent driving sector, and look forward to using the power of technology to create better transportation experiences. This edition of Yunqi Capital takes you through the details of DeepRoute's latest funding round.

Developing VLA Models

Expected Launch in 2025

Regarding this funding round, DeepRoute CEO Guang Zhou stated: "The completion of this round represents deep recognition from the automotive industry chain of our technical capabilities and engineering expertise. Next, DeepRoute will leverage the resource advantages of our investors and partners to endow AI with human-like thinking and judgment capabilities through intelligent driving, ultimately achieving artificial general intelligence. I believe that in the era of AGI, AI will become infrastructure, and I firmly believe that DeepRoute will be a major participant in the AI 3.0 era."

DeepRoute's core R&D team is among the earliest in the industry to engage in AI development and deployment. From being the first to introduce a "mapless" solution to launching the end-to-end intelligent driving model DeepRoute IO, DeepRoute has consistently been at the forefront of AI exploration. In the next phase, DeepRoute will solidify its computing infrastructure, recruit top-tier talent, and accelerate its layout of cutting-edge AI technologies.

It is reported that as a longstanding partner of NVIDIA, DeepRoute is among the first batch of domestic companies to receive Thor chips. DeepRoute will use these chips to develop its VLA model (Vision Language Action Model), with the model expected to officially launch in 2025. Through the VLA model, the intelligent driving system will gain higher-order reasoning capabilities, enabling it to understand complex interactive events in traffic scenarios, hidden semantic information, and logical reasoning.

End-to-End Models Deployed at Scale

Exploring Robotaxi Large-Scale Operations

Currently, DeepRoute has successfully deployed its end-to-end model in production vehicles and established partnerships with multiple mainstream automakers, jointly advancing mass production cooperation for over ten vehicle models. By the end of this year, three vehicle models equipped with DeepRoute's intelligent driving system are expected to reach consumer markets. Meanwhile, DeepRoute will leverage its domestic mass production experience to empower overseas automaker business development.

At the same time, DeepRoute is exploring a new commercialization path — using production vehicles based on end-to-end models to achieve large-scale Robotaxi operations. Unlike traditional Robotaxi services, DeepRoute's Robotaxi is not constrained by operational zones, offering advantages in both time and economic costs that facilitate market adoption and accelerate Robotaxi deployment.

As intelligent driving vehicles enter mass production and Robotaxi operations scale up, DeepRoute's intelligent driving system will better understand the objective laws of the physical world, develop higher-order reasoning capabilities, and evolve into artificial general intelligence for the physical world, empowering industries across the board.