Asian Tech Press (Dec 22) -- Haomo.AI, a self-driving startup backed by Chinese auto manufacturer Great Wall Motor (GWM), announced on Wednesday that it has raised nearly 1 billion yuan ($157 million) in Series A funding round, making it the first self-driving unicorn company to achieve mass production in China.

The investors are Meituan, Hillhouse Capital Group, Qualcomm Ventures and others. And the funds raised will be mainly used for self-driving R&D investment and talent system construction.

Founded in 2019, Haomo.AI was formerly known as the Intelligent Driving Department of GWM, andvhas a core team partly from GWM and partly from the outside Internet and AI expert team.

CEO Gu Weihao said that the company's assisted driving program for passenger cars will be expanded seven times in 2022, and the project for unmanned logistics vehicles in terminals will be expanded three times. Meanwhile, Haomo.AI's supercomputing center is under preparation to promote the high-speed development of its data intelligence system.

At present, Haomo.AI's assisted driving solutions have been successively equipped with models produced by GWM, including the WEY Mocha, the Tank 300 City Edition, the WEY Latte, the WEY Macchiato, and the HAVAL Shenshou.