Chinese AI truck startup Zaihe closes ¥1B in funding
What's the deal? Zaihe Truck, a Chinese new-energy intelligent heavy truck maker founded in 2022, has completed a cumulative ¥1B (~$137M) financing round combining equity, debt, and strategic industry capital. Backers include BV Baidu Ventures, Suzhou Innovation Investment Group, and Lushi Investment, alongside industrial partners Horizon Robotics, Chuangyuan Group, and Wanan Technology. Five major state-owned banks — including ICBC and China Construction Bank — also provided financial support.
The Suzhou-based company was founded by Zhang Lei, who holds a PhD from Tsinghua University's vehicle engineering department and previously served as the youngest division chief at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology. Co-founder and chief technology officer Guo Liqun is a former chief engineer at FAW Group, where she led development of the flagship Jiefang J7 truck.
Why now? China's new-energy heavy truck sector is entering what the company calls a "strategic window." Zaihe has already delivered hydrogen-electric trucks with a claimed 1,500km range — the longest for any heavy truck globally — to logistics giant SF Express. It has expanded operations across more than ten provinces, accumulated tens of millions of kilometres in driving and autonomous testing data, and ranked in the top three among new heavy truck makers by delivery volume in 2025.
The company was also named a potential unicorn enterprise in China this year.
What could go wrong? The autonomous heavy truck space faces stubborn technical hurdles. Single-vehicle autonomous systems struggle with beyond-line-of-sight perception and severe weather. Zaihe's answer — a "vehicle-cloud integration" architecture layering redundant hardware, advanced driver assistance, an onboard AI model, and a cloud-based oversight system — is ambitious but unproven at scale.
The capital-intensive nature of truck manufacturing also poses risks. Building a full-stack product from scratch, rather than converting existing diesel platforms, demands sustained investment.
The signal: Zaihe's ¥1B round — structured as a blend of venture equity, state bank credit, and strategic industrial capital — exemplifies a maturing financing model for capital-intensive Chinese deep-tech mobility startups, designed to bridge the costly gap between R&D and mass production. The involvement of Horizon Robotics, which committed to co-developing a full perception-to-execution autonomous driving stack, underscores how component suppliers are increasingly placing strategic bets on next-generation truck OEMs rather than waiting for procurement contracts. With the company already delivering hydrogen-electric trucks to SF Express and ranking in the top three among China's new heavy truck makers by 2025 delivery volume, the round suggests investor confidence that the sector's "strategic window" — where new-energy policy support, logistics cost pressures, and autonomous technology converge — is narrowing fast.
Read more: 36kr.com
