Beijing-based Momenta announced this morning that it raised a $46 million Series B round led by NIO Capital, Sequoia Capital China and Hillhouse Capital. Momenta produces self-driving car software that applies deep learning to mapping, path planning and object recognition problems. Shunwei Capital, Sinovation Ventures, Unity Ventures and Daimler also participated in the round.
Quite a few U.S. startups are trying to create the software to power autonomous vehicles — Drive.ai and nuTonomy to name a few. But unlike these startups, Momenta is merely a year old. The startup counts three ex-Microsoft researchers on its team and three PhDs.
And outside of other obvious differentiators…