WeRide's last funding round was in May, when it was valued at $3.3 billion post-investment in a Series C round.

(Image credit: WeRide)

Chinese self-driving startup WeRide plans a US initial public offering (IPO), an announcement from China's securities regulator shows.

WeRide plans to issue up to 159,045,000 shares of ordinary stock and list them on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq exchange, according to an announcement on the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) website today.

WeRide submitted filings with the CSRC for an offshore listing, and if it does not complete the listing within 12 months from now, it will need to update those filings if it plans to move forward, according to the announcement.

Chinese companies were not originally required to report to their home regulators for US listings, but after the financial fraud of Luckin Coffee and Didi's US listing drama, the CSRC introduced new rules at the end of 2021 that imposed that requirement.

The announcement did not reveal much more about WeRide's US IPO other than the number of shares it plans to issue and where it will trade.

Notably, the announcement only represents that the CSRC received WeRide's filings and does not imply that the company's application was approved.

On August 10, an announcement by the CSRC revealed that Nio (NYSE: NIO)'s LiDAR provider Innovusion filed for a US IPO.

On August 18, Innovusion was asked to file supplemental materials to address questions including compliance with the establishment of a share control structure.

Founded in 2017 in Guangzhou, WeRide's products include Robotaxi, Mini Robobus, Robovan, Robo Street Sweeper and SAE L2-L4 solutions for high-level intelligent driving.

WeRide is now conducting autonomous driving tests and operations in 25 cities across five countries, the company announced earlier this year.

It has a self-driving fleet of more than 500 vehicles and more than 16 million km of autonomous driving, WeRide said in March.

On March 13, Bloomberg reported that WeRide had secretly filed for an initial public offering in the US and was looking to raise as much as $500 million.

On May 13, WeRide announced that it had closed a Series C round of funding at a post-investment valuation of $3.3 billion. This is the company's latest funding round, with no mention of the exact amount raised.

Nio's LiDAR provider Innovusion plans Nasdaq listing