Led · Series D · Sep 2019

TuSimple develops self‑driving truck systems and operates testing fleets with human safety operators for long‑haul highway routes. The company began public‑road testing in 2018, including a 120‑mile stretch between Tucson and Phoenix and segments in Shanghai. It maintains a global headquarters in San Diego, an engineering center and truck depot in Tucson, and additional operations and a facility in Texas to support autonomous trips; it also has operations in Beijing and Shanghai. TuSimple has expanded its commercial partnerships and investor base to include logistics and automotive players such as UPS, Mando, Traton Group and U.S. Xpress. The company continues to scale testing and operations in the U.S. while diversifying strategic investors and customers. Financially, TuSimple has raised $648 million since its 2015 founding, including a recent $350 million round. TuSimple develops autonomous driving systems and software for heavy commercial trucks. The company operates a fleet of 40 self-driving trucks in the U.S., used for testing and freight runs between Arizona and Texas. TuSimple was launched in 2015 and has operations in China, San Diego and Tucson, Arizona. It is backed by investors including Sina, Nvidia, UPS and Tier 1 supplier Mando Corporation. TuSimple is working with partners to move from retrofitting to purpose-built autonomous semis, including a 2024 production plan with Navistar. The new partnership with Traton will expand operations into Europe and aims to develop Level 4 autonomy on Scania trucks, beginning testing on a route between Södertälje and Jönköping in Sweden. TuSimple builds a full-stack Level 4 autonomous driving system for long-haul trucks. The company operates testing programs and fleets in China, San Diego and Tucson, Arizona, and reports more than 50 trucks and 18 contracted customers. TuSimple was founded in 2015. It plans to use new funding to continue developing its autonomous vehicle technology and to expand long-haul routes in Arizona and Texas. Financially, the company has raised $298 million in total funding to date. TuSimple has conducted public-road testing since 2018 and runs daily tests with partners such as UPS on routes between Phoenix and Tucson. TuSimple develops camera-centric Level 4 autonomous driving systems for commercial trucks and operates daily commercial routes in Arizona. The company runs three to five fully autonomous trips per day across three routes and has 12 contracted customers. TuSimple emphasizes a camera-based perception stack (claiming a 1,000-meter vision range) while using LiDAR for mapping and some data collection. On-road trips run with two safety engineers—one behind the wheel and one monitoring data—and the company says these paid runs both generate revenue and validate its system. TuSimple plans to scale its commercial fleet to more than 50 trucks by June and expand fully autonomous deliveries into Texas. It is also funding joint production programs and integrations with OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers and sensor partners to enable commercial production and operation of self-driving trucks. TuSimple develops a full-stack autonomous driving system for line-haul trucking that integrates perception, localization, mapping, motion planning, control and actuation. The company uses advanced sensor fusion of cameras and radars to detect and track objects beyond 200 meters and its localization achieves consistent decimeter-level precision. Its decision-making system adapts to road conditions, including lane changes and speed adjustments, to maximize safety and efficiency. TuSimple demonstrated an SAE Level 4 self-driving system in Shanghai and is ramping up deployments in the U.S., starting in Tucson, Arizona. The company is focused on scaling testing to two full truck fleets—one in China and one in the U.S.—and is building a production engineering team in Tucson while maintaining R&D in San Diego and Beijing. TuSimple is led by CEO Mo Chen.

Led · Equity · Jun 2018

Pintec is an independent technology platform enabling financial services in China, led by founder and CEO William Wei. Its product suite uses artificial intelligence, big data and blockchain to power consumer finance, SME loans, wealth management, robo-advisory and online insurance. Core offerings include its lending solutions platform “Dumiao” and its robo-advisory solution “Polaris,” which support installment payments, individual credit loans, SME lending, wealth management and online insurance. By the end of 2017 the company had about 200 financial and business partners, including Xiaomi, Qunar, Ctrip, BestPay, Vip.com and several securities and trust firms. Pintec has also established two Singapore joint ventures—Avatec.ai (announced 2018) for digital lending technology and Pivot Fintech (announced 2017) for wealth management technology—to serve Southeast Asia. The company plans to use the new funding to increase investment in R&D, traffic integration, risk management and operations.