DeepWay Closes $310M in Pre-IPO Financing as it Seeks to Take Baidu-Backed Autonomous Electric Trucks Global
April 21, 2026 - 8:01 am
The Hefei-based company, which has delivered 6,400 intelligent electric heavy-duty trucks in China and is targeting a Hong Kong stock market listing, has attracted an Australian superannuation fund among its latest investors, a sign that its clean freight story is reaching institutional capital well beyond its home market. It has yet to turn a profit.
DeepWay
The Baidu-backed developer of intelligent electric heavy-duty trucks, DeepWay, has closed the second tranche of its pre-IPO financing, bringing the total raised in that phase to $310 million ahead of a planned Hong Kong listing. The latest tranche was led by Stone Venture, with participation from NGS Super, an Australian superannuation fund for education-sector workers, and Xiamen Guosheng Fund. Existing investors ABC Impact, backed by Temasek, and Nanjing Ronghe Venture Capital also increased their stakes.
The involvement of NGS Super is notable. Australian superannuation funds managing retirement savings for hundreds of thousands of teachers and community workers do not typically lead the list of investors in pre-IPO rounds for Chinese autonomous vehicle startups.
The EU Tech Scene
That NGS Super participated signals either a conviction in the decarbonisation of heavy freight as a structural investment theme, or a broader search for returns in a market where domestic options look stretched, or both.
NGS Super’s chief investment officer Ben Squires cited the company’s “long-term investment value” and its potential to create a “sustainable commercial closed loop” in a statement, while noting the fund’s “extensive resources in Australia and New Zealand” as a basis for supporting DeepWay’s international ambitions.
DeepWay was founded in 2020 as a joint venture between Baidu and Lionbridge, a Chinese commercial vehicle services platform. The company’s thesis is straightforward but uncommon: rather than converting existing diesel truck platforms to electric power, the approach taken by most of the industry, DeepWay designed its vehicles from scratch for electric powertrains and built intelligent driving capabilities in from the outset.
Baidu, which holds a 17.28% stake in the company according to its prospectus, provides the foundation via its Apollo autonomous driving technology, which DeepWay is authorised to access and modify under what the two companies describe as an exclusive commercial vehicle arrangement. The company then layers its own driver assistance and platooning systems on top of that base.
The commercial results so far are rapid, if not yet profitable. DeepWay delivered 509 vehicles in 2023, 3,002 in 2024, and 2,873 in the first half of 2025 alone, roughly 6,400 units in total as of June 2025, all from commercial customer orders. Its H1 2025 revenue was approximately CNY 1.5 billion (around $200 million), according to its Hong Kong listing prospectus. But it has not achieved profitability: the prospectus records a net loss of CNY 675 million.