Meituan co-led the unmanned forklift producer’s series C-plus round, which came seven months after a first close that featured ByteDance and Lenovo.

VisionNav Robotics, the China-based maker of self-driving forklifts, raised more than $80m in a series C-plus round co-led by e-commerce group Meituan and venture capital firm 5Y Capital. The company, which has a presence in 30 markets globally, is planning to use the money to increase its market share further, especially in the logistics sector. VisionNav provides artificial intelligence, computer vision and deep learning-equipped driverless forklifts that help identify and move goods in warehouses. A shortage of forklift operators, rising wages and increased demands on logistics supply chains are making more companies look for ways to automate their warehouse operations. Other companies in the warehouse robotics space that have raised corporate funding include Vecna Robotics, Mooe Robot and Third Wave Automation. VisionNav had already secured hundreds of millions of yuan (RMB100m = $15.5m at current rates) in October 2021 from investors including TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and Lenovo Capital, the corporate venturing arm of computing technology group Lenovo. China Unicom-CICC, a joint vehicle between telecommunications operator China Unicom and investment banking firm China International Capital Corporation, also took part in the October round, which included Shunwei Capital, IDG Capital and Eastern Bell Venture Capital. Lenovo Capital already contributed to a $15m series B2 round in April 2021, which was led by IDG Capital and backed by Eastern Bell Capital and Flyfot Ventures, taking VisionNav’s overall funding to more than $33m. Lenovo Capital led a $14.2m series B1 round the previous year also featuring Flyfot Ventures and Eastern Bell Capital, after the latter chipped into a series A round completed in 2018 that helped lift the company’s funding to $4.5m in total. Image courtesy of VisionNav Robotics.

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Edison Fu

Edison Fu is a reporter and Asia liaison at Global Corporate Venturing.