Rongbao · March | Autonomous Driving and Chip R&D Accelerate, Enterprise Service Companies Secure New Funding Amid Digitalization Wave
Nuro brings in new investors for its Series C round, Innoviz launches an automotive perception platform, and emerging consumer brands tap into Ocean Engine.
About Rong Bao: Rong Bao is a monthly digest that curates noteworthy news and insights from Gaorong Ventures and its portfolio companies. Each issue shares just ten items — including key funding updates and milestones, but also new trends, innovations, and perspectives. As with Gaorong's vision to "create" a better life, we believe every step of innovation brings infinite possibilities.
Autonomous Driving · Nuro Adds New Investors in Series C, Strengthening Leadership in Autonomous Delivery
On March 25, Nuro announced new investors in its Series C round, including Woven Capital (backed by Toyota) and fast-casual chain Chipotle. This marks the first investment for Woven Capital, the newly launched growth-stage fund from Toyota subsidiary Woven Planet. The additional fundraising signals continued confidence from a group of world-class investors in Nuro and its autonomous delivery vision.
The round was previously led by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., with participation from new investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company, LLC and Baillie Gifford (a major Tesla institutional shareholder), as well as existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund I and Greylock.
The addition of new investors, combined with Nuro's recent approval from the California DMV as the first and currently only company permitted to test fully driverless vehicles on public roads, further solidifies its leadership in autonomous delivery. Following this round, Nuro will continue strengthening its industry-leading autonomous driving technology, expanding its team, and growing its delivery services.
Autonomous Driving · Innoviz Launches Automotive Perception Platform InnovizAPP, Accelerating Autonomous Driving Progress
Recently, Innoviz, a leading supplier of high-performance solid-state LiDAR, announced the launch of InnovizAPP — an automotive perception platform for the auto industry. The platform includes automotive-grade hardware and software that enable autonomous vehicles (AVs) to identify and classify objects. Innoviz has already provided InnovizAPP services to several major automakers, helping them advance their global autonomous driving programs.
InnovizAPP is built on Innoviz's advanced perception software, which leverages the rich data from Innoviz's LiDAR sensors combined with proprietary AI algorithms to analyze point clouds and estimate object velocity with high precision. The software can accurately detect and classify objects within 250 meters in any 3D driving scenario, including cars, trucks, motorcycles, and pedestrians. It also runs perception algorithms in real time, detecting and classifying pixels as collision-relevant or not.
The InnovizAPP hardware offers an automotive-grade reference design based on low-cost, automotive-grade components. It can connect to existing vehicle systems and enable real-time perception through simple plug-and-play integration, allowing automakers to test and learn how to build their own autonomous driving systems.
Both the perception software and Innoviz's solid-state LiDAR sensor InnovizOne are designed and developed to meet the auto industry's highest standards, making Innoviz the only startup globally to receive BMW pre-installation certification.
Semiconductors · Biren Technology Completes Series B Round, Advancing China's Chip Innovation Through Technology
Recently, Biren Technology, a general-purpose intelligent chip design company, announced the completion of its Series B financing. In just over a year since its founding, Biren Technology has raised more than 4.7 billion RMB in cumulative funding. The robust capital barrier built in such a short time will serve as critical support for the company to continue attracting top industry talent, leading technological innovation, and driving large-scale commercial deployment.
Biren Technology's Series B round continued to receive strong support from numerous well-known industrial and financial investors. The round was co-led by Ping An, New World Group, and Country Garden Venture Capital, with participation from multiple prominent institutions. Gaorong Ventures previously invested in the company's Pre-B round in August 2020.
Founded in 2019, Biren Technology is committed to developing original general-purpose computing architectures, building efficient software and hardware platforms, and providing integrated solutions in intelligent computing. In its development path, the company will first focus on cloud-based general-purpose intelligent computing, gradually catching up with existing solutions across AI training and inference, graphics rendering, and high-performance general-purpose computing to achieve breakthroughs in domestic high-end general-purpose intelligent computing chips.
Big Memory Technology · MemVerge Uses Big Memory Technology to Accelerate Cancer and COVID-19 Research
In March, MemVerge, a pioneer in big memory software, and BioMap, a leader in single-cell gene research, jointly announced their successful use of big memory technology to accelerate single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis time. Compared to traditional DRAM-based solutions, the cutting-edge solution composed of Intel® Optane™ persistent memory (PMEM) and MemVerge Memory Machine software achieved 800x faster scRNA-seq loading times and 25x speedup in certain compute phases.
Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis is a process involving multiple large-scale data processing steps. The long-running processes are compute-intensive and demand high memory resources. MemVerge's Memory Machine software addresses the memory resource challenge. Its ZeroIO™ memory snapshot feature eliminates storage IO bottlenecks, significantly shortening the overall execution time for complete scRNA-seq analysis. In the future, other bioinformatics analyses using large matrices derived from next-generation sequencing technologies can also be accelerated with big memory software.
Industrial Upgrade · Digital Apparel Platform Lingdi Technology Completes 200 Million RMB Pre-B Round
Recently, Lingdi Technology, which provides 3D design SaaS online tools, content, and supply chain fulfillment services for apparel enterprises, announced the completion of a 200 million RMB Pre-B round. Gaorong Ventures led the company's A+ round in early 2020 and co-led this round.
Lingdi Technology entered the apparel industry through the design and development segment — the biggest bottleneck for industry efficiency — providing products and services to brand owners, ODMs, and fabric suppliers. Its offerings include Style3D, a 3D design tool and online collaboration platform supporting simulation rendering that enables digital operations across the entire apparel R&D process, from fabric selection and style design to rendering simulation. It also generates digital BOMs according to factory production standards, connecting manufacturing processes and打通 the full circulation chain in the apparel industry, further driving digitalization across the entire sector.
In 2020, Lingdi Technology's software and supply chain revenue exceeded 200 million RMB. The company has partnered with numerous mainstream domestic and international apparel brands, designers, fabric suppliers, and ODM factories, including Bosideng, Ribo, Septwolves, Lilanz, Purcotton, and Ellassay.
Enterprise Services · Retail Finance SaaS Company Tengyin Caizhi Completes 100 Million+ RMB A+ Round
In March, Tengyin Caizhi announced the completion of an A+ round exceeding 100 million RMB, invested by Tencent and Gaorong Ventures. Gaorong Ventures had previously invested in the company's Series A round in early 2020.
Founded in 2019, Tengyin Caizhi positions itself as the digital infrastructure for retail financial institutions and a SaaS technology company fully embracing the WeCom ecosystem, focused exclusively on retail finance. It not only helps financial institutions find growth opportunities within the WeChat ecosystem in the post-pandemic era, but also provides dedicated financial services to financial institutions' hundreds of millions of WeChat customers.
Tengyin Caizhi's founding team comprises senior fintech experts from Tencent with track records in building billion-scale transaction platforms, alongside seasoned industry veterans. With multiple leading advantages across product, service, technology, and traffic, Tengyin Caizhi has within two years achieved partnerships with multiple state-owned banks and over 60% of large joint-stock banks, including China Merchants Bank, CITIC Bank, China Minsheng Bank, and China Everbright Bank, serving more than 120 domestic and international financial institutions.
Enterprise Services · Aozhe Launches Data Management Tool "Aozhe · Youge," Initiates "Spark Plan"
On March 30, Aozhe held its "Always New Possibilities" brand upgrade and new product launch event. At the event, Aozhe announced its future-oriented upgrade, unveiled a new brand image and proposition, and introduced "Aozhe · Youge," a digital management tool for business personnel.
Aozhe founder and CEO Xu Pingjun noted that "low-code has already penetrated enterprises' core applications, becoming the core engine of enterprise digitalization." Going forward, 65% of enterprise digital applications will be built using low-code.
Currently, Aozhe's portfolio includes three series and four core products: "Aozhe · Yunshu," a digital intelligence engine for professional developers; "Aozhe · H3 BPM," a process management engine; "Chuanyun," a development tool for digital administrators; and the newly launched "Aozhe · Youge," a digital management tool for business personnel.
Additionally, Aozhe announced the launch of its "Spark Plan," aimed at collaborating with industry partners to enable digital transformation, jointly building a digital application ecosystem, and helping various industries achieve digital transformation.
Leveraging its strong accumulation in process digitalization, Aozhe has entered the comprehensive business digitalization space through low-code products. It currently serves over 100,000 enterprise users, including 60% of China's Fortune 500 companies and 500+ large enterprise groups, spanning more than 30 industries including manufacturing, real estate, energy, finance, internet, healthcare, education, and government.
Innovative Drugs · MingMed Completes Nearly $60 Million Series A to Develop Globally Leading First-in-Class Drugs
On March 17, MingMed, dedicated to developing globally competitive first-in-class drugs, announced the completion of a nearly $60 million Series A round, led by Gaorong Ventures.
Founded in October 2019, MingMed has a R&D team composed of multiple top scientists and experts, along with a scientific committee of globally influential scientists. Its product pipeline covers ophthalmic drugs, small-molecule immunology drugs, cell therapy, and novel aesthetic medicine drugs, with breakthrough progress at world-class levels across all pipelines.
To date, MingMed's innovative drug for dry age-related macular degeneration has achieved breakthrough results in an exploratory double-blind clinical trial involving dozens of patients. The company's novel genetically recombined protein aesthetic drug has also successfully completed pilot production. Within the year, multiple product pipeline candidates are expected to enter Phase I/II clinical trials in both China and the US.
Maternal & Infant Care Services · Saint Bella Completes Nearly 200 Million RMB C1 Round, Building Maternal Care Platform for New-Generation Families
Recently, Saint Bella and its parent company Becom International announced the completion of a nearly 200 million RMB C1 round, led by Tencent with continued follow-on investment from Gaorong Ventures. This round represents the largest single financing in China's maternal care services industry. Gaorong Ventures had invested in the company's Pre-A round in early 2018 and continued to invest in subsequent rounds.
Founded in 2017, Becom International is committed to providing better maternal care services for new-generation families. Its luxury postpartum care brand Saint Bella, as the only brand partnering with global luxury hotels, has captured over 90% of high-end users' awareness and mindshare through its 24-hour one-on-one nursing model integrated with art therapy.
To date, Becom International has completed national expansion through its luxury postpartum care brand and extended upstream and downstream, including the affordable luxury brand BabyBELLA and the at-home care brand Beihu Jia, becoming a lifestyle brand covering more care service categories. Its services span pregnancy care, postpartum care, in-home nursing, and online health management, maintaining 300% annual growth across business lines.
Ronghui · Emerging Brands Visit Ocean Engine, Digital Marketing Ignites New Business Possibilities
On March 18, Gaorong Ventures, together with UpHonest Capital, invited over 40 emerging consumer brands to visit Ocean Engine for discussions on how digital marketing can ignite new business possibilities. Ocean Engine industry experts shared the latest trends across sectors including personal care, beauty, food, and beverages, and conducted interactive sessions on practical topics such as brand account operations for long-term maintenance matrices and Douyin marketing trends.
