Silicon Valley and Shanghai based autonomous driving computing chip maker, Black Sesame Technologies raises a strategic investment from Bosch’s Boyuan Capital, which was established in 2021. Prior to this, Black Sesame completed its strategic and C rounds of financing, raising several millions of dollars, increasing the company’s market value to nearly $2 billion.
The new investment will help the company strengthen its comprehensive partnership with Bosch in autonomous driving. The two companies will jointly develop autonomous driving solutions and accelerate the commercialization of self-driving technologies.
In the recent times, Bosch has enhanced its research and investment in autonomous driving. Prior to Black Sesame, which is Bosch’s first investment portfolio in autonomous driving chip maker, Bosch has made investments in key players in the Chinese autonomous driving industry.
Bosch and Black Sesame association goes back to 2018 when Black Sesame signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation framework agreement with Bosch to form a partnership across multiple sectors including smart city, smart home, connected vehicle and autonomous driving.
“Autonomous driving sector has entered an era of rapid growth of computing power, during which high-level autonomous driving technologies will become the core capability of smart vehicles in the future,” said Jiang Hongquan, Managing Partner and Chairman of Boyuan Capital, “L3/L4 autonomous driving demands high-performance, low power consumption, safe and reliable chips with high computing power as a core component. With the rapid growth of China’s smart vehicle industry over the past years, as well as the steadily increasing demand due to the automotive industry’s shortage of chips, high-performance automotive AI chips have great growth opportunities. Black Sesame Technologies provides an automotive-grade self-driving high performance computing platform. With its proprietary architecture, a flexible toolchain and an open ecosystem, Black Sesame Technologies is at a leading position in the industry. I’m very pleased to join the exciting journey as an investor of Black Sesame.”
“Black Sesame Technologies has always been committed to empowering the implementation of autonomous driving applications with its high-performance autonomous driving chips, for which an open ecosystem and cooperation are essential,” said Wilson Liu, co-founder and COO of Black Sesame Technologies. “Bosch has seasoned manufacturing experience and deep know-how in the automotive sector. The strategic investment by Bosch’s Boyuan Capital in Black Sesame Technologies marks a further step in our partnership. Looking forward, we plan to join force to create intelligent driving solutions, accelerate the application of intelligent driving technologies, and realize the vision of making autonomous driving a widely adopted mobility solution and making driving easier and smarter as early as possible.”
With the booming development of smart mobility, Black Sesame Technologies’ next step is to become a key player in the development and implementation of high-performance chips for autonomous driving. With the investment from Boyuan Capital, Black Sesame Technologies will work more closely with Bosch to create a safer, smarter and more comfortable travel experience for all.
