Fortsense raises $60M Series C for lidar SPAD chips
What's the deal? Fortsense has closed a Series C round of more than US$55M (≈$60 million), the Chinese maker of lidar core chips and machine vision solutions said. Investors include Xintong Electronics, Jingce Electronic, Huarui Investment, Huining Investment, Xingyin Asset, Qingke Capital, and the China Europe New Energy Vehicle Fund.
What does it do? Fortsense designs single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) chips for solid-state lidar. The company says its automotive-grade SPAD chips have reached mass production with leading carmakers, with cumulative shipments topping one million units.
What's the endgame? The money will fund a push into single-chip RGBD technology, which fuses colour imaging and depth sensing on one chip. Fortsense aims to give each pixel both colour and depth data, cutting the alignment errors that come from running cameras and lidar as separate systems. It plans to begin industrialising RGBD in 2027.
Why now? China's automotive lidar market is spreading from flagship models to a wider range of cars. In September 2026, lidar installations in Chinese passenger vehicles rose 74% year on year, as top suppliers raced to ship high-performance SPAD-based chips.
What could go wrong? Fortsense's RGBD plan remains a 2027 target, and its prospects hinge on getting the technology to work and winning customer adoption. The single-chip approach is still ahead of production.
The signal: The round is less a bet on untested technology than on a chip supplier that has already reached volume production. It also reflects investor interest in extending such parts beyond cars into robotics and industrial applications.
Read more: sohu.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
