Momenta raises another 500 million dollars

The race to develop autonomous driving technology is in full swing in China. At the current stage, the start-up Momenta seems to hold out against all of its competitors. Indeed, according to information taken up by Techcrunch, this Friday, November 05, 2021, the autonomous driving company has just made another fundraiser. This also amounts to $ 500 million like the previous one and follows an injection of capital from General Motors.

autonomous car momenta

A lift that allows Momenta to greatly exceed the bar of one billion dollars

Before the lifting of this day, the Chinese company had already managed to raise 700 million dollars for account of its activities. With this new injection, the total reaches the billion mark and blithely exceeds it with an estimated surplus of $ 200 million.

To achieve this level of funding, the start-up was able to assemble a list of major investors. In addition to the Chinese public company SAIC Motor, we find in the list of big companies like Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Bosch and of course General Motors.

Two sovereign wealth funds have also agreed to finance the start-up’s autonomous driving project. These include Yunfeng Capital of Chinese Jack Ma and Temasek who is from Singapore.

In order to convince all these investors, the company has implemented a dual strategy. This consists in a sense of providing advanced driving assistance systems to car manufacturers like General Motor.

It also involves working with suppliers like Bosch. The other direction of the company’s strategy leads it to carry out research on type 4 driving. This involves driving without a driver.

A strategy based on the game of alliances

Momenta justifies its lead over the competition by its strategy. The start-up has been able to forge alliances with car manufacturers. Unlike companies working in the same field which have instead opted for the development of their own fleet of robotaxis. A maneuver that is much more expensive.

Momenta’s job is simply to equip certain vehicles of its partners with ADAS systems. This makes it easier to collect the data he needs to improve his product.

It must be said that data collection is an essential point for the development of a reliable autonomous vehicle industry. However, relying solely on information from prototypes of autonomous vehicles is very tedious.

This largely justifies the strategy implemented by Momenta. This looks a lot like the ones recently used by Mobileye and Tesla. And when we see the success of these two companies, we are entitled to say that the Chinese start-up was not mistaken.

In the agreement with General Motor, only vehicles marketed in China by the American brand will for the moment be equipped with the solution. This one, which is a mixture of millimeter wave radars and high definition cameras, will not be used in the United States.

On the other hand, Momenta recently opened a first office abroad, mainly in Stuttgart, Germany. This could allow it to equip the cars of its German partners very soon.