SF Express Makes Three Additional Investments, and Autonomous Vehicle Company "White Rhino" Completes Nearly 500 Million Yuan in Series B Financing | Exclusive from 36Kr

36Kr Auto has learned that White Rhino, an L4-level autonomous driving company, recently completed its Series B+ financing. So far, the total amount of White Rhino's Series B financing has accumulated to nearly 500 million RMB. In this round of financing, existing shareholders SF Express and Linear Capital continued to participate, and institutions such as Yijun Capital, 360 Fund, and Huatai Zijin also joined as new shareholders.

It is reported that the funds from this round will be mainly invested in three major areas: the R & D of vehicle-grade unmanned vehicles, the continuous iteration of AI technology, and the expansion of business scenarios. It is worth noting that after this round of financing, the total amount of White Rhino's Series B financing has approached 500 million yuan. Moreover, this is SF Express' third investment within one year since its first capital injection in August 2024.

White Rhino was founded in April 2019 by Zhu Lei and Xia Tian, former members of Baidu's autonomous driving team. It is an autonomous driving company dedicated to developing full-stack unmanned delivery solutions and providing regular operation services for unmanned vehicles. In March this year, White Rhino officially announced that Huang Gang, the former general manager of Dongfeng Commercial Vehicle Company, joined the company as its president.

The unmanned logistics field targeted by White Rhino is currently in a period of commercial explosion with the resonance of technology, cost, and policies.

The booming development of assisted driving in passenger cars has driven down the prices of key components such as lidars. National policies are also promoting the application of unmanned vehicles in the logistics industry, and currently, 103 cities have opened road rights for unmanned delivery vehicles. Under large-scale road testing and commercial operation, the logic of cost reduction and efficiency improvement of unmanned logistics vehicles is gradually being verified.

In 2025, Neolix completed a 1-billion-yuan Series C+ financing, and Jiushi Intelligence raised 100 million US dollars in its Series B3 financing. Now, White Rhino has received its second round of over 100 million yuan financing this year. Against the background of a cooling investment and financing environment, capital is still intensively flowing into this field, which confirms investors' consensus on the "critical point of large-scale profitability".

The Scale of the Unmanned Logistics Field is Taking Shape

White Rhino started with supermarket delivery scenarios and has reached cooperation with leading retail enterprises such as Yonghui and Hema. Since 2023, White Rhino has begun to focus on logistics scenarios, helping enterprises solve the delivery problems from distribution centers to stations.

The application scenarios of autonomous driving in the logistics industry are mainly divided into three categories. The first is trunk logistics, which is responsible for inter - city, long - distance, and high - speed transportation. The second is branch logistics, which connects the trunk and the end, involving medium - and short - distance transportation and is responsible for transporting goods from regional distribution centers to urban distribution points. The third is last - mile delivery, which transports goods from urban distribution points to stations or consumers, solving the "last mile" problem in logistics.

Among the three scenarios, the distance of trunk logistics ranges from hundreds to thousands of kilometers. Due to high speeds and large traffic volumes, the safety risks of unmanned operation are difficult to resolve in the short term, and the road rights for unmanned heavy trucks have not been opened. The distance of branch logistics is usually dozens to hundreds of kilometers. Although the transportation distance and speed are lower than those of trunk logistics, it needs to frequently shuttle through mixed road conditions such as the urban - rural fringe and drive on motorways, also facing policy restrictions on road - right opening.

The "distribution center - station" last - mile delivery scenario targeted by White Rhino usually has a distance of less than ten kilometers, and the routes are relatively fixed, which reduces the technical risks of unmanned vehicles. At the same time, local governments are continuously opening the road rights for unmanned vehicles in this scenario based on the principle of prudence and tolerance. In the past, last - mile delivery relied on manually - driven tricycles or small trucks, with a daily round - trip demand of up to 4 - 5 times, resulting in problems such as efficiency bottlenecks and high labor costs. However, the high - frequency demand just helps to spread the cost of unmanned logistics vehicles.

Currently, White Rhino's main product is the R5 series of unmanned vehicles, with a cargo box volume of 5.5 m³, capable of loading over 500 parcels and having a full - load cruising range of over 120 kilometers on a single charge. The products serve leading logistics enterprises such as SF Express, ZTO Express, J&T Express, and China Post, and have been deployed in over 100 cities across the country.

Since the end of last year, the active volume of White Rhino's unmanned vehicles has increased by more than 10 times. "The active number in December 2023 was close to 100 units, reaching 200 units in Q1 this year and 500 units in Q2. By August, this number had increased to nearly 1000 units," CEO Zhu Lei told 36Kr.

White Rhino's goal is to achieve a daily active volume of 5000 unmanned delivery vehicles by 2026.

Zhu Lei believes that the market for low - speed unmanned vehicles is very large, but the total number of active unmanned vehicles in the industry is currently less than 10,000. "Within 10,000 units is the stage of emotional consumption. In this stage, if you have a cheap and intelligent product, you can impress customers."

President Huang Gang told 36Kr that the delivery problem from distribution centers to transfer points is one of the pain points in the logistics industry. "Couriers need to make 4 - 5 round - trips between distribution centers and transfer points every day, and each trip takes about 40 - 60 minutes. That is to say, couriers spend four or five hours on the road every day."

Now, White Rhino's unmanned vehicles can undertake the transportation from distribution centers to transfer points, and the focus of couriers' work has shifted to parcel collection and delivery in communities. Moreover, unmanned vehicles can operate 24 hours a day and can also perform delivery tasks through remote dispatching at night. Customers can achieve both improved efficiency and cost savings.

According to White Rhino's operation data, its unmanned vehicles can help customers reduce the last - mile delivery cost by 30% - 50%. A courier franchisee in Wuhan introduced White Rhino's unmanned vehicles. After comprehensive measurement of vehicle costs, depreciation expenses, and electricity costs, the single - parcel delivery cost decreased from 0.2 yuan to 0.1 yuan.

Spurring Commercialization, White Rhino Moves Towards Vehicle - Grade Standards

"The second stage of the industry will return to rational consumption. When the number of vehicles develops to 100,000 - 200,000, customers will care very much about the stability of products and whether they can help save money every day."

Zhu Lei said, "There is a qualitative difference between a vehicle running a few times and running several times every day for 365 days without any problems. I think only when it meets vehicle - grade standards can such a guarantee be provided."

White Rhino is currently carrying out the R & D of vehicle - grade unmanned vehicles, the continuous iteration of AI technology, and the expansion of business scenarios. This round of financing will accelerate White Rhino's progress in these three aspects.

Huang Gang said that vehicle - grade unmanned vehicles have two advantages. On the one hand, they have high asset - holding value. On the other hand, they will improve the attendance rate and safety after being put on the market.

He believes that in terms of vehicle R & D and manufacturing, compared with passenger cars with assisted driving, L4 unmanned vehicles are relatively simpler in structure because there is no cockpit. L4 unmanned vehicles have lower requirements for comfort but more stringent requirements for safety and fault tolerance. "Our real difficulty lies in AI itself. For the unmanned vehicle industry, the real challenge is how to make the vehicle run more safely within a controllable range."

Now, safety is the common focus of the entire industry. In the field of assisted driving for passenger cars, the technical route has gone through four rounds of leaps, and each generation of technology has evolved to overcome "extreme conditions" and "long - tail problems".

Early on, it relied on high - precision maps, but high costs and poor freshness limited its generalization. After 2023, it shifted to the BEV + Transformer architecture, which fuses multi - sensor data through a "bird's - eye view" to reduce error accumulation.

In 2024, the end - to - end model emerged, improving adaptability to complex scenarios through the lossless transmission of "input data - output actions". In 2025, the VLA multi - modal model became the new focus, combining vision, language, and action reasoning to achieve human - like decision - making and safety redundancy in long - tail scenarios.

Zhu Lei said that White Rhino is not a technology company selling codes but a product company selling unmanned vehicles, and products are the company's top priority. "Our logic is: if the technology is advanced but has no effect on product indicators, we won't use it; if the technology is difficult but has an effect on the product, then we'll find a way to solve it."

He said that in the technical routes of recent years, it is certain that the technologies that bring the greatest benefits to White Rhino's unmanned vehicle products are mainly the BEV + Transformer architecture and the end - to - end model.

The vehicle - grade unmanned vehicle that White Rhino is about to launch is not a single model but an expandable unmanned vehicle platform that can adapt to various scenarios.

"In the unmanned vehicle industry, we used to look for scenarios with our technology and products. But now, with a certain scale of commercialization of unmanned vehicles, various scenarios are looking for products. So we decided to develop unmanned vehicle products in a platform - based and modular way to meet the diversified needs of scenarios," Huang Gang revealed to 36Kr. White Rhino is also preparing new products with larger sizes, specifications, and volumes than the current products on the new platform.

An increase in volume means an expansion of application scenarios. Zhu Lei told 36Kr that White Rhino's products are not limited to the last - mile express delivery scenario and may develop into the same - city freight in the future. "The current product is defined for same - city or within 100 - kilometer transportation. In the future, it may also develop into inter - city transportation, which mainly depends on scenarios and the needs of customers."

In terms of the specific sales and operation model, Zhu Lei told 36Kr that White Rhino hopes to sell the whole vehicle products through the hardware + FSD model. "Now, most companies sell hardware at a price lower than the BOM cost, but we hope to make a profit throughout the product life cycle through services."

Zhu Lei revealed that when the product scale reaches 10,000 units, White Rhino is expected to turn financially profitable.

With continuous capital investment and in - depth focus on scenarios, White Rhino's commercialization path is becoming clearer. When unmanned vehicles move from the technology verification stage to the rational consumption stage, the balance point between scale and cost is already clear.