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According to Red Star Capital Bureau on July 27, autonomous driving unicorn WeRide submitted documents for listing in the United States in the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs). The IPO will be led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and CICC. The company applied to be listed on Nasdaq in the form of ADS, with the stock code tentatively set as "WRD".

According to the official website, WeRide was founded in 2017 and is the world's leading L4 autonomous driving technology company. The prospectus shows that from 2021 to the first half of this year, the company's cumulative losses exceeded 5.1 billion yuan, of which research and development expenses were nearly 2.8 billion yuan.

Autonomous driving unicorn valued at $5.1 billion, with investment from He Xiaopeng, GAC, Nvidia, and Bosch

WeRide has carried out autonomous driving research and development, testing and operations in 30 cities in 7 countries around the world, with more than 1,600 operating days. It has formed five major product matrices including autonomous taxis (Robotaxi), autonomous minibuses (Mini Robobus), autonomous freight vehicles (Robovan), autonomous sanitation vehicles (Robo Street Sweeper), and advanced intelligent driving (Advanced Driving Solution). It provides a variety of services such as online car-hailing, on-demand public transportation, same-city freight intelligent sanitation, advanced intelligent driving solutions, etc., and also has autonomous driving licenses in China, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore.

WeRide's business is carried out in the form of "1+2+5". Among them, "1" represents a core goal, that is, to achieve safe, reliable and efficient fully autonomous driving technology; "2" represents two major product lines, namely Robotaxi and Robobus; "5" represents five major support systems, namely R&D system, test system, operation system, safety system and data system.

In June, WeRide received the notice for the commercial pilot of highway travel services in Beijing's intelligent connected vehicle policy pilot zone, and its autonomous driving travel service vehicles were approved to carry out commercial pilot projects of autonomous driving travel services in specific areas of Beijing.

Han Xu, founder and CEO of WeRide, was the chief scientist of autonomous driving at Baidu and left Baidu in March 2017. Han Xu holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, is a tenured professor at the University of Missouri, and was the director of the Computer Vision and Machine Learning Laboratory.

Before the IPO, Han Xu held 7.6% of the shares and had 31% of the voting rights; Li Yan held 6.3% of the shares and had 10.8% of the voting rights; and Duane Ziping Kuang held 8.5% of the shares and had 5.7% of the voting rights.

WeRide has completed 10 rounds of financing. Investors include He Xiaopeng, GAC Group (601238.SH), NVIDIA, Bosch, IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Cornerstone Capital, etc. The total amount of public financing has exceeded US$1.09 billion (approximately RMB 7.903 billion). It completed the last round of D+ financing in 2022, with a valuation of US$5.1 billion (approximately RMB 36.977 billion).

The company lost more than 5.1 billion yuan in three and a half years, half of which was spent on research and development.

WeRide said that the company's commercial revenue ranks first among similar autonomous driving companies. According to the prospectus, its main sources of income are divided into two parts: the first part is the sale of products, including robot buses, robot taxis, robot street sweepers and related sensor kits; the second part is the provision of services, including autonomous driving operations, technical support services and advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) R&D services.

From 2021 to 2023, WeRide achieved revenues of 138.2 million yuan, 527.5 million yuan, and 401.8 million yuan, respectively, and net losses of 1.0073 billion yuan, 1.2985 billion yuan, and 1.9491 billion yuan, respectively. In the first half of 2024, the company achieved revenues of 150.3 million yuan and a net loss of 882 million yuan, with a cumulative loss of more than 5.1 billion yuan in three and a half years.

Behind the ever-expanding losses is the huge investment in R&D.

The prospectus shows that from 2021 to the first half of 2024, WeRide's R&D expenses were 443.2 million yuan, 758.6 million yuan, 1.0584 billion yuan, and 517.2 million yuan, respectively, totaling 2.778 billion yuan in three and a half years, accounting for 54% of the loss.

WeRide said it will focus its R&D investment on testing, experimentation and commercialization of autonomous driving technology, expand its R&D team and invest more resources to improve its technical capabilities. The company also promised that its R&D expenses will continue to increase.

WeRide has started to generate revenue, and its gross profit margin is not low, reaching 37.4%, 44.1% and 45.7% from 2021 to 2023 respectively.

Red Star News reporter Wu Danruo

Editor: Xiao Ziqi