China's EV chassis maker PIX raises $11M to build its own smart vehicles – TechCrunch

The autonomous driving industry in China has enjoyed a boom over the past two years, with both institutional and corporate investors pouring money into a driverless future. Companies thriving in the downstream, those offering robotaxi services, operating robo buses, or dispatching delivery bots, have been particularly popular with investors, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and reaching massive valuations. The prospects of becoming cash-rich and a household name have lured some of their upstream suppliers to start building end solutions as well. One of these ambitious self-driving hardware suppliers is PIX Moving, a Chinese company specializing in automotive skateboards -- a type of chassis that houses the batteries, drive units and other key components, and can be adapted to various kinds of self-driving scenarios because of its modular architecture -- similar to what Canoo does. Founded by former architect Chuan Yu in 2014, PIX recently secured 72 million yuan ($11 million) from a Series pre-A round, lifting its capital raised to $20 million, it told TechCrunch.