(Yicai) June 28 -- KargoBot has secured CNY600 million (USD82.6 million) in a new fundraiser, the Chinese autonomous driving freight startup under ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing Technology said today.

Participants in the Series A round include Ordos State-Owned Assets Investment Holding Group, CIMC Vehicles Group, a manufacturer of container trucks, and Horizon AI, a self-driving chip developer, the Beijing-based firm said.

The proceeds will be used to accelerate the commercialization of its Level 4 self-driving freight formation technology, said KargoBot. The firm has raised over CNY1 billion (USD137.6 million) in the past year.

KargoBot is committed to developing L4 driverless freight formations for bulk logistics, where a driver drives the lead vehicle and is followed by a series of unmanned trucks. The company has already driven more than 8 million kilometers of such tests.

KargoBot is carrying out trial operations in sparsely populated areas where a lot of bulk logistics is needed, such as Ordos in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which is one of the country’s main coal and wool-producing areas, the company said.

In December last year, KargoBot received a strategic investment from Beijing-based Horizon AI and the two parties agreed to link arms on high-performance autonomous driving domain controllers. The amount injected has not been disclosed.

Founded in 2021, KargoBot was spun off from Didi as an independent unit in October last year. Wei Junqing, the former chief technology officer of Didi’s autonomous driving business, is KargoBot’s chief executive officer.

Editor: Kim Taylor