Wang Kai, former CTO of Li Auto, starts a business in embodied intelligence and has secured approximately $50 million in financing | Exclusive from 36Kr

36Kr has learned from multiple informed sources that Wang Kai, an investment partner at Yuanjing Capital and former CTO of Li Auto, has embarked on a venture in embodied intelligence. Meanwhile, a core executive in assisted driving technology from a leading car - making company has also participated in the project's preparation. Currently, this technology leader is on leave.

According to 36Kr, this startup project is quite popular. It has only been established for a few months and has already won the favor of many leading institutions. Yuanjing Capital made the first - round investment, and institutions such as Sequoia Capital and BlueRun Ventures participated in the second - round investment. The total financing of the project is approximately $50 million.

The popularity of this project is not only due to the trend of embodied intelligence but also largely attributable to the AI technology mass - production and engineering experience of the founding team.

Wang Kai joined Li Auto in September 2020 as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), fully responsible for the R & D and mass - production of intelligent vehicle - related technologies, including electronic and electrical architecture, intelligent cockpit, autonomous driving, platform - based development, and the Li OS real - time operating system.

Before joining Li Auto, Wang Kai had an eight - year work experience at Visteon. He was not only the original designer of Visteon's assisted driving platform DriveCore but also led five mass - production projects in different directions, covering multiple aspects of vehicle intelligence such as chips, algorithms, operating systems, and hardware architectures.

After becoming the CTO of Li Auto, Wang Kai promoted the mass - production of an assisted driving solution based on Horizon chips, helping Li Auto break free from the constraints of Mobileye's black - box solution and achieving a record of mass - producing assisted driving features in just seven months.

In early 2022, Wang Kai left Li Auto and joined Yuanjing Capital as an investment partner. According to 36Kr Auto, Wang Kai is still in the position. However, in the investment circle, an investment partner is similar to an advisor and does not have a strong binding relationship with the enterprise.

The other founding member of the project, an executive in assisted driving technology from a leading car - making company, not only has an impressive background in large enterprises but also has experienced a complete end - to - end and VLA mass - production and delivery process. This is a rare AI technology delivery experience among embodied intelligence startup projects.

As another popular direction for the industrialization of large models besides assisted driving, the embodied intelligence track has attracted many assisted driving talents and a large amount of hot money in recent years.

For example, in March this year, Tashizhihang, an embodied intelligence startup that had been established for only over 50 days, received a $120 million angel - round financing, setting a record for the largest angel - round financing in China's embodied intelligence industry.

Similar to Wang Kai's startup, Chen Yilun, the founder of Tashizhihang, also has a profound background in assisted driving.

Cars are regarded as robots without hands, and the autonomous driving technology route is in line with embodied intelligence. Therefore, not only car companies such as Tesla and XPeng view embodied intelligence as a new growth point, but also many automotive industry executives have chosen it as a startup direction.

Before Wang Kai, Yu Yinan, the former vice - president of Horizon, and Gao Jiyang, the former head of mass - production R & D at Momenta, also chose the embodied intelligence track for their startups.

Car companies are in a fierce competition in assisted driving technology. Huawei has announced that its computing power investment in assisted driving has reached 45 Efolps. The embodied intelligence field is also flooded with capital, and the competition for core talents between the two sides will obviously continue.

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