DeepRoute.ai

DeepRoute.ai (Chinese: 元戎启行) is a Chinese autonomous driving company founded in 2019 and headquartered in Shenzhen, China. The company develops full-stack self-driving solutions including perception, decision-making, and control systems.

DeepRoute.ai was founded in February 2019 in Shenzhen, China, by Zhou Guang (周光), who serves as the company's CEO.¹

In September 2019, the company collaborated with Dongfeng for a live-streamed autonomous driving demonstration.²

In October 2019, during the 7th Military World Games, DeepRoute.ai conducted Robotaxi demonstration operations.²

In November 2019, it obtained an intelligent connected vehicle road test permit for public roads in Shenzhen.³

In October 2020, DeepRoute.ai signed an "Autonomous Driving Leadership Project" with Dongfeng to build one of China's largest autonomous fleets.⁴

In August 2020, DeepRoute.ai announced its partnership with Cao Cao Mobility,⁵ a Geely-backed ride-hailing company,⁶ to test Robotaxis in Hangzhou for daily operations, planning to provide Robotaxis during the 2022 Asian Games.⁷

In September 2021, DeepRoute.ai secured US$300 million in a Series B funding round led by Alibaba.⁸

In December 2021, the company unveiled its DeepRoute-Driver 2.0, an L4-level autonomous driving solution comprising five solid-state lidar sensors, eight cameras, a proprietary computing system and an optional millimeter-wave radar. with a production cost of under US$10,000.⁹¹⁰

In June 2022, it partnered with Deppon Express to provide autonomous light truck freight transfer services.¹¹

In March 2023, the company launched its high-precision map-free intelligent driving solution, DeepRoute-Driver 3.0.¹²

In November 2024, Great Wall Motor announced a $100 million Series C funding round for Deeproute. With this, Deeproute has completed five rounds of financing, raising a cumulative total of over $500 million. Its shareholders include Fosun RZ Capital, Yunqi Partners, Alibaba, Vision Plus Capital, and Dongfeng, among others.¹³ In the same month, Deeproute.ai emphasised that they were in "deep cooperation" with Nvidia and spoke on being part of the first batch of companies in China to get a hold of Nvidia's newer Thor chip for cars which will be used in a new system released next year. This new system will help manage more complex driving scenarios through visual cues.¹⁴

VLA Model is a Vision–language–action model designed for autonomous driving systems. It integrates visual perception, semantic understanding, and action decision-making into a unified framework, aiming to enhance the safety and adaptability of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) in complex road environments.¹⁵ The model was officially launched on August 26, 2025, as the core of DeepRoute.ai's DeepRoute IO 2.0 platform.¹⁵

The VLA model is characterized by its "visual-language-action" architecture, which incorporates a chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning capability inspired by large language models. This design is intended to address the "black box" limitations of traditional end-to-end autonomous driving systems by enabling the model to analyze information, infer causality, and make decisions in a more transparent and interpretable manner.¹⁶¹⁷

The company has partnered with several automakers including Dongfeng Motor Corporation and Geely to develop and test autonomous vehicles.¹⁸