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Hefei-based DeepWay has successfully completed its second round of pre-listing financing, bringing the total amount raised in this phase to $310 million. The company, which specializes in the development of intelligent heavy-duty electric trucks with the support of Baidu, has already delivered 6,400 units in the Chinese domestic market. DeepWay is currently preparing to list its shares on the Hong Kong stock market.
An Australian superannuation fund has joined the list of new investors, which indicates the growing interest of international institutional capital in environmentally friendly freight transportation far beyond China. It is worth noting that the company is still unprofitable.
The latest investment tranche was led by Stone Venture, and among the participants were the NGS Super fund, which manages retirement savings for Australian education workers, and the Xiamen Guosheng Fund. In addition, existing investors ABC Impact, which is backed by Temasek, and Nanjing Ronghe Venture Capital increased their stakes. The involvement of NGS Super seems atypical, as Australian pension funds usually do not top the list of investors in pre-IPO rounds of Chinese self-driving vehicle developers.
The participation of a fund such as NGS Super may indicate confidence in the prospects for decarbonizing heavy haulage as a structural investment area or a search for better returns in markets where domestic supply appears to be limited. Ben Squires, Chief Investment Officer of NGS Super, emphasized the “long-term investment value” of DeepWay and its ability to build a sustainable commercial cycle. He also added that the fund’s resources in Australia and New Zealand will support the company’s international aspirations.
DeepWay was established in 2020 as a joint project between Baidu and Lionbridge, a Chinese commercial vehicle service platform. The company’s concept is clear, though quite rare in the industry: instead of adapting existing diesel models for electric propulsion, DeepWay designed its vehicles from the ground up. This made it possible to integrate both the electric propulsion system and intelligent control systems into the vehicle architecture from the very beginning.
According to the prospectus, Baidu owns a 17.28% stake in the company and provides the technology base through its Apollo autonomous driving platform. DeepWay has the right to use and modify this technology under an exclusive agreement for the commercial vehicle segment. On top of this base, the company implements its own developments, such as driver assistance systems and convoy driving technologies.
DeepWay’s commercial achievements demonstrate rapid dynamics, although profitability has not yet been achieved. The number of vehicles delivered to customers grew rapidly: from 509 units in 2023 to 3,002 in 2024. In the first half of 2025 alone, 2,873 trucks were shipped, bringing the total to about 6,400 units as of June 2025. All these deliveries were based on real commercial orders. Revenue for the first half of 2025 reached approximately $200 million. However, the financial statements record a net loss of $97 million for the full year 2024 and $53 million for the first six months of 2025. Management expects costs to remain high due to active investment in research, sales, and expansion abroad.
The listing application was submitted to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in November 2025 with the support of sponsors CICC and CMB International. The procedure is to be carried out under a special Chapter 18C rule, which allows technology companies that do not yet meet standard financial criteria but have a high market capitalization to list on the stock exchange. This mechanism has already been used by other players in the autonomous driving market, such as WeRide and Pony.ai in October 2025, and lidar manufacturer Hesai a month earlier.
DeepWay’s technology stack is divided into two levels. The first is the Tianji Suixing driver assistance system, which is standard across the entire truck line and available on a subscription basis. The second, higher level of autonomy is Tianji Yanxing, an intelligent convoy driving system that is already being used for real-world freight transportation in several regions of China. The company currently has permits to test drones in Beijing, Hefei, Changxing, and Inner Mongolia. The ultimate goal is to create fully autonomous cargo robots that do not require human presence, although the exact timeline for this plan has not been determined.
The funds raised will be used for operations, technology development, and expansion. DeepWay has already deployed sales networks in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the UAE, Oman, Australia, and New Zealand, with the first overseas deliveries expected to be completed by the end of 2025. The global context of the freight transportation market, which is estimated at $3.9 trillion and still critically dependent on diesel, makes DeepWay attractive to investors who are betting on electrification. Unlike Western competitors such as Einride, which are mostly at the pilot project stage, DeepWay is already delivering thousands of working trucks on a commercial basis.
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