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on september 26, according to leifeng.com, ni kai, ceo of heduo technology, a domestic intelligent driving solution provider, will join navinfo in the near future, or take up the no. 1 position in intelligent driving. the news of the appointment is planned to be disclosed at the end of september.

regarding the above news, "daily economic news" contacted navinfo for more information, and the other party responded: "the news is not true."

in august this year, there were reports that the restructuring plan promoted by heduo technology and guangzhou automobile group co., ltd. had encountered changes, and the current financial situation of heduo technology was very tight. affected by this, heduo technology is disbanding most of its core departments such as data and r&d, and suspending r&d activities.

according to people familiar with the matter, the start of the restructuring discussions between heduo technology and gac group can be traced back to july this year, when the restructuring plan was close to being negotiated. after the restructuring plan failed to receive support from all shareholders, ni kai issued an internal letter informing employees of the matter and stated that the company would be unable to pay july wages, due wages and provident funds.

according to the reporter's understanding, heduo technology has reached cooperation with gac group as early as 2021, and has successively received three rounds of investment of approximately 400 million yuan from gac. after completing the c+ round of financing in july last year, gac group held approximately 13% of the shares of heduo technology and became the largest external shareholder. at the business level, starting from 2022, heduo technology’s smart driving solutions (including parking and driving) have also been implemented on gac aion, trumpchi, haopin and other models.

tianyancha shows that heduo technology was established in june 2017 and is a company focusing on mass production solutions for autonomous driving. ni kai used to be a senior scientist at baidu deep learning research institute and was an important technical leader in the early days of baidu’s autonomous driving business.

since its establishment in 2017, heduo technology has completed multiple rounds of financing, with cumulative financing exceeding 1 billion yuan. investors include idg, sequoia china, guangdong finance, gac group and navinfo. the latest financing was the c3 round of financing in july 2023, which was jointly led by guangdong yueke financial group and gac capital, with a financing amount of 300 million yuan. according to the official website, its main products and businesses are the driving autonomous driving system holopilot and the parking autonomous driving system holoparking.

in fact, since entering 2024, in the face of the transformation of technical solutions in the industry to "remove or reduce high-precision maps", navinfo is actively adjusting its business strategy, transforming from a traditional map supplier to a supplier of intelligent automotive solutions. .

in terms of smart cockpits, navinfo recently took over didi’s cockpit team of about 300 people. the two parties jointly increased capital in navinfo’s cockpit subsidiary navinfo, navinfo. the didi team that joined navinfo had participated in the development of the xpeng mona m03 cockpit system in the past.

in addition, public information shows that in early september this year, navinfo established a smart driving technology subsidiary in beijing, with navinfo ceo cheng peng as the legal person. at present, navinfo technology has not disclosed the ceo candidate.

daily economic news