Zvision closes tens of millions of dollars in Series C funding, raising nearly $100 million this year.

(Image credit: Zvision)

Xpeng Motors-backed Chinese LiDAR maker Zvision recently closed a Series C funding round of tens of millions of dollars, the Beijing-based company announced today, without disclosing the exact amount.

The financing was led by Genesis Capital, with participation from CITIC Securities Investment, Z&Y Capital and Yizhuang Equity Investment Fund Management, the company said in a press release today.

On January 10, Zvision announced that it closed RMB hundreds of millions of Pre-C round of financing led by Xpeng, with participation from SAIC Capital, Dongfeng BoCom Yuanjing Auto Industry Equity Investment Fund, and Intel Capital.

To date, Zvision has raised a total of nearly $100 million through Pre-C Series as well as Series C funding, the company said today.

The latest funding will be used to iterate on Zvision's full range of automotive LiDAR products, accelerate core chip development and expand production capacity, the company said today.

The funds will also be used to drive the development and commercialization of automotive-grade MEMS LiDAR solutions, it said.

Founded in 2017, Zvision has developed a full suite of MEMS LiDAR solutions covering long-range, short- and medium-range applications.

In June last year, Zvision announced the completion of RMB hundreds of millions of RMB Series B financing, led by Intel Capital and Chinese investment institution and startup platform Sinovation Ventures in Series B1 and Series B2, respectively.

Zvision was valued at around RMB 1 billion ($141 million) at the time, local automotive media Chedongxi previously cited sources familiar with the matter. It is unclear what the company's valuation was in the latest round of funding.

It's worth noting that Xpeng is not using Zvision's LiDAR products in its current mass-production models, despite having led the latter's Pre-C round of funding.

Xpeng currently has two models equipped with LiDARs, the P5 with Livox as its LiDAR supplier and the G9 with RoboSense.

This is not quite the same as Nio's approach, which uses LiDARs from Innovusion, which it supports, on its NT 2.0 platform-based models.

Nio Capital, backed by William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of Nio, has made five consecutive investments since leading Innovusion's Series A funding round in 2018 and is currently Innovusion's largest institutional investor.