Navigation Brilliance (智慧航海), an autonomous vessel driving system provider, announced a Series A funding round valued at tens of millions of yuan yesterday, led by Cowin Capital, with participation from Shandong Talent Fund.
Proceeds from this round will be used to optimize and market autonomous vessel driving system and electric vessels.
In recent years, as global shipping industry is increasingly married to modern information technology and AI, a number of new segments have emerged, such as smart vessel, smart shipping monitoring, smart shipping service and smart port.
The country has rolled out a raft of policies to encourage intelligent service providers to explore new use cases for their technologies, undertake pilot programs, and construct new business patterns.
According to the website of Navigation Brilliance, it currently supplies three products, including a self-driving ship, a container ship and an electronic maritime map.
Besides, it also offers a suite of solutions catering to vessel test, assistive piloting system and dispatch and control of autonomous boats, among others.
The company has filed 500 patents and so far has closed deals in excess of 100 million yuan (US$14.37 million). It claims to have built the world’s largest container ship for commercial operation known as “Zhi Fei,” or Brinav, which has three modes to choose from, namely, crewed sailing, remotely controlled-driving and autonomous navigation.
In addition, it is also one of the leading enterprises to participate in formulation of the country’s autonomous vessel standards.
