BEIJING — WeRide, a China-based autonomous driving startup, stated on Wednesday that it could deepen development with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance on autonomous driving expertise for the China market because it raised $310 million.

The brand new funding values your entire firm at $3.3 billion, Reuters reported.

WeRide, led by founder Tony Han, stated Alliance Ventures, the strategic enterprise capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, has change into the startup’s “lead strategic investor.” WeRide is pursuing what is understood within the auto trade as a Degree 4 autonomous normal, by which the automobile can deal with all points of driving in most circumstances with no human intervention.

WeRide, which is testing autos in California, is headquartered in China’s southern metropolis of Guangzhou.

Buyers for the $310 million funding spherical embody Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi and China Structural Reform Fund, WeRide stated in an announcement. The corporate did not specify how a lot every firm invested within the funding spherical.

Nissan Motor co. COO Ashwani Gupta stated: “As China stands on the forefront of serving to outline the way forward for mobility, we’re delighted to associate with WeRide to convey much more progressive applied sciences and providers to counterpoint folks’s lives in China.”

Automakers and expertise companies are investing billions of {dollars} in autonomous driving, aiming to take an early lead in what many take into account the way forward for mobility.

In Guangzhou, the place a number of COVID-19 instances had been reported in latest weeks, WeRide and several other different autonomous driving corporations, together with Toyota-backed Pony.ai, are delivering important items to residents in locked-down communities utilizing self-driving autos.