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"Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily" August 20th (Reporter Chen Mei)Recently, Qianxun Location completed a new round of strategic financing, with an overall valuation of more than 16 billion yuanThe investors were led by Beijing Information Industry Development Investment Fund, followed by Shanghai Shuyu Dingyuan Investment Fund, Beijing Dongcheng District Science and Technology Innovation Industry Investment Fund, and Qingdao Zhonghe Xingyao Venture Capital Fund.

According to the data from Cailianshe Venture Capital Channel-Zhizhong,Qianxun Location was founded in 2015 by China North Industries Group Corporation and Alibaba Group.Focusing on "Internet + Location (Beidou)", through the integration and construction of the Beidou ground-based network, a location service cloud platform is built to meet the needs of the country, industry and mass market for precise location services.

Qianxun Location CEO Chen Jinpei comes from the Alibaba system and has worked in Alibaba for more than 10 years. He previously served as general manager of Alibaba's cloud computing business.

16 billion unicorn attracts state-owned capital from Beijing and Shanghai

The investors of Qixun Location this time are quite strong.Among the four funds that invested, three are state-owned assets from Beijing and Shanghai, namely the Beijing Information Industry Development Investment Fund, which led the investment, and the Shanghai Shuyu Dingyuan Investment Fund and the Beijing Dongcheng District Science and Technology Innovation Industry Investment Fund, which followed the investment.

Beijing Information Industry Development Investment Fund is a high-tech industry development fund established during the 14th Five-Year Plan period in Beijing, with a target scale of 10 billion yuan.The subscribed capital of Beijing Municipal Government Investment Guidance Fund shall not exceed 3 billion yuan.

The fund is established around the two tracks of "industrial transformation and upgrading" and "transformation and development".Key investments include industrial Internet, cybersecurity and information technology, Beidou, and Internet 3.0.

The other two state-owned assets in Beijing and Shanghai are the follow-up investors Shanghai Shuyu Dingyuan Investment Fund and Beijing Dongcheng District Science and Technology Innovation Industry Investment Fund.Equity penetration shows that the former's largest shareholder is the Shanghai Yangpu District National Supervisory Commission; the latter was approved by the Dongcheng District Government of Beijing and aims to consolidate the gathering of the new generation of information technology industry.

The three major state-owned enterprises in Beijing and Shanghai have made moves, which shows the special industry status and market recognition of Qianxun Location. According to the official website of China North Industries Group Corporation, in 2015, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce approved the name of China Location "Qianxun Location Network Co., Ltd." and established it in Yangpu District, Shanghai, which marked an important step forward in the application of Beidou satellite navigation system.

When it was founded, Qianxun Location's registered capital reached RMB 2 billion, with China North Industries Group Corporation and Alibaba Group each holding 50% of the shares.In October 2019, Qixun Location completed a RMB 1 billion Series A financing round, with investors including Shanghai International Group Asset Management Co., Ltd., ICBC Financial Asset Investment Co., Ltd., and China State-owned Capital Venture Capital Fund.

After the completion of this round of financing, the valuation of Qixun Location exceeded 10 billion yuan, reaching 12.5 billion yuan, becoming an industry unicorn in one fell swoop.

The "Ali system" gene is obvious, and the second largest shareholder has achieved a small exit

As a company nurtured by Alibaba, Qixun Location has a "close" relationship with Alibaba.

Equity penetration shows that, as of now,Hangzhou Alibaba WeiTou Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Alibaba WeiTou) is the largest shareholder of Qixun Location, with a shareholding ratio of 41.96%; China North Industries Group Corporation Beidou Application Research Institute is the second largest shareholder, with a shareholding ratio of 34.27%; the third largest shareholder is Hangzhou Chengyun Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Chengyun Network), with a shareholding ratio of 5.50%.

in,The largest shareholder "Ali Weitou" and the third largest shareholder "Chengyun Network" have the same actual controller, is Hangzhou Xinzhan Chuangtu Network Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Xinzhan Chuangtu),The latter is jointly held by Shao Xiaofeng and Wen Jia.

Wen Jia and Shao Xiaofeng are important figures in the Alibaba Group.The 2024 Alibaba Partner List shows thatWen JiaHe is the President of Public Affairs of Alibaba Group and a Director of Alibaba Entertainment Group;Shao XiaofengHe is the executive vice president of Alibaba Group and chairman of the Alibaba Group Risk Management Committee.

According to his resume, Shao Xiaofeng was the captain of the First Brigade of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau in his early years. He joined Alibaba in March 2005 and served as the director of the Alibaba Group's Network Security Department. He was promoted all the way.Alibaba’s 2022 annual report shows that Shao Xiaofeng is one of the 28 Alibaba partners.

Wen JiaShe initially worked in the Shanghai media circle and served as a KOL in the food industry. She shared her food experiences through her personal public account "Eger is Full" and was labeled by the outside world as "a literary young woman who grew up by the West Lake."

It is worth mentioning that China North Industries Group Corporation Beidou Application Research Institute, which originally held 50% of the shares, completed a small withdrawal in February this year.The Beijing Equity Exchange shows that the 7.7% equity held by the Beidou Application Research Institute has a listed transfer floor price of 1.307 billion yuan; on April 9, 2024, the transfer floor price was adjusted to 1.208 billion yuan, corresponding to a post-investment valuation of 15.7 billion yuan.

"Beidou" unicorn enters autonomous driving

Based on "Beidou + Application", Qianxun Location has laid outSmart driving, smart water conservancy, smart mining, digital agriculture, smart cities, smart transportationand other fields.

Qianxun Location CEO Chen Jinpei said,Qixun Location is fully integrating into Alibaba's big model "Tongyi Qianwen", and plans to gradually establish a dedicated big model in the field of spatiotemporal intelligence based on the general big model, which will be gradually opened to partners in the future.

An investor said in an interview with the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reporter:By jointly establishing Qixun Location, Alibaba has promoted the application of the Beidou satellite navigation system."Although there is not much difference between Beidou and GPS in technology, the Beidou system still has a lot of room for development in the fields of high-precision maps and autonomous driving."

At present, the intelligent driving application scenarios of the Beidou unicorn Qixun Location include autonomous driving, V2X vehicle-road collaboration and smart cockpit.In the field of autonomous driving, the reporter of Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily noticed that Alibaba has made many moves: In 2021, Alibaba invested 1.3 billion yuan in autonomous driving unicorns"The Yuanjun Sets Out"; Recently, a smart autonomous driving company listed in the United StatesMomenta, Ali is also there.

In terms of smart cockpit, Alibaba and SAIC Motor jointly established"Zebra Smart Driving", and its first smart cockpit OS was launched in 2021.

The above-mentioned investor told the reporter of Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily:The high-precision positioning service provided by the Beidou system is crucial to intelligent driving and can achieve centimeter-level positioning accuracy.

"From a technical perspective, the basic components of the upstream Beidou industry chain, including chips, antennas and other key technologies, have achieved 100% independent control, which provides strong support for high-precision positioning services, ground-based augmentation systems, fusion positioning solutions and other services.In the future, with the integration of emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and big data, the Beidou system will also generate new models and business formats.“

As for Alibaba itself, in addition to investment, its internal intelligent driving development has made certain breakthroughs.for example,Its artificial intelligence team iDSTIn terms of autonomous driving technology, we have achieved breakthroughs in two specific scenarios, rural lanes and multi-lanes.However, its DAMO Academy autonomous driving team was merged into Cainiao Group, which is seen by the outside world as the business needs to "immerse" itself in the scene and seek commercialization.

As of now, Qianxun Location, which was brought up by Alibaba, has reached cooperation with more than 40 automobile manufacturers including GAC, SAIC, Hongqi, Ideal, Xiaopeng, Zhiji, and Huawei, supporting 6 million shared bicycles to achieve sub-meter positioning in all scenarios and the shipment of 30 million mobile phones that support lane-level navigation.