After three consecutive years of losses, the pressure on 4D Map CEO Cheng Peng is immense. "My shareholders are furious with me because of the losses," he said in an interview at the end of October.

Since increasing its investment in intelligent driving and chip development in 2022, NavInfo has been losing money for three consecutive years. From 2022 to 2024, NavInfo's net losses were 336 million yuan, 1.314 billion yuan, and 1.095 billion yuan

However, he also stated in the interview that "we will strive to return profits to shareholders within one to two years."

Behind this, is his leadership in the company's major strategic transformation: becoming the 'new Tier 1' in the automotive industry, providing customers with a one-stop solution for cabin driving with AI as the centerpiece.

This is also the third major strategic transformation in the 23 years since the establishment of SDVMAP. From being a 'map person' to a 'car person', and then to an 'AI person', this traditional map service provider is trying to find a new ecological

Founded in 2002, NavInfo is a traditional automotive map supplier that, with its early advantage in map surveying and mapping qualifications, once held the largest share of the in-vehicle navigation market. However, as the automotive industry shifted

After a long transformation, NavInfo has still not emerged from its difficulties. Apart from consecutive years of losses, its basic business of intelligent cloud still accounts for more than 70% of its total revenue. Both intelligent driving and inte

Regarding the challenges faced by this transformation, Cheng Peng believes that they mainly stem from market cognition. The outside world still sees Sinovation Technology as a "map service provider", so Sinovation plans to gradually change this perce

Our goal is definitely to survive and live better. I don't care about occupying 60% of the market like a map, and I don't pursue that. As long as our products are first useful, second easy to use, and third affordable and accessible to everyone, I wi

Three transformations: from 'map person' to 'AI person'

When we started our business 23 years ago, we were a group of 'map makers'. The team was mainly composed of men from the STEM fields who were experts in location, GPS, and surveying. By 2015, we realized that there were still many problems in the aut

Founded in 2002, Siwei Tuxin was formerly the Siwei Surveying and Mapping Company of the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. As soon as the company was established, it obtained the country's first Class A surveying and mapping qualification for ma

From 2002 to 2014, NavInfo mainly focused on B-end location services, occupying the largest share of the pre-installed in-car navigation market with precise navigation products. Data showed that from 2007 to 2013, NavInfo secured over 60% of the shar

In 2010, NavInfo was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, becoming a benchmark for capitalization in the navigation map industry chain. However, after the listing, NavInfo did not usher in a golden period of development. After being continuously at

In an interview with Leifeng website in July, Cheng Peng reflected: the period from 2010 to 2015 was the company's comfort zone where many people were waiting for high stock prices to cash out. Could the company really prosper under such circumstance

In 2015, Cheng Peng became the CEO of AutoNavi to promote the company's transformation from a map provider to an intelligent driving service provider. That year, AutoNavi established an autonomous driving research and development department. In 2017,

In 2021, SDV (previously known as SFOTON) underwent business system restructuring to form four major sectors, namely “Smart Cloud”, “Smart Driving”, “Smart Cockpit” and “Smart Chip”, focusing on intelligent car solutions and expanding into urban inte

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High-precision maps remain a strength and one of the main revenue sources of NavInfo at the beginning. The financial report shows that from 2021 to 2024, the revenue of intelligent cloud services accounted for 65.27%, 61.54%, 55.99%, and 64.08% of th

However, as the intelligent driving market shifts from a heavy reliance on high-precision maps to solutions that are less dependent on or even without maps, NavInfo is facing new transformation pressures after enjoying the dividend period. In 2023, C

To accelerate its transformation, in October this year, NavInfo announced its complete embrace of AI and upgraded its new brand to SEEWAY.AI. In Cheng Peng's view, NavInfo's AI transformation represents the direction choice of some technology-focused

Cheng Peng explained that currently, NavInfo is promoting the collaboration of three major businesses: intelligent driving, chips, and cloud. The intelligent driving business has transitioned from the technology verification stage to the large-scale

Regarding the proportion of the three major businesses, according to Meng Qingxin, the vice president of DeVinci Technologies, within the next 3 to 5 years, intelligent driving will rank first in terms of overall revenue. It is expected that orders w

According to Cheng Peng, from 2024 to the first half of 2025, NavInfo and its invested Jianzhi robots have obtained a total of 5.85 million new targeted smart driving solutions, covering 20+ mainstream car companies and 100+ targeted models. High-end

Loss to be resolved

Despite having a clear strategy, NavInfo still faces major financial pressure.

In detail, the four major business segments of NavInfo in 2024 are as follows: the revenue of NavInfo's intelligent cloud business reached 2.254 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 28.96%; the intelligent chip business revenue reached 566 mil

According to the financial report of Siweituoxin, the business revenue and cost reduction of intelligent driving this year are closely related to the mass production process of customer vehicle models. The delay in the mass production time or the slo

In the first half of this year, the performance of intelligent cabin and intelligent driving businesses was even less optimistic. Specifically, the intelligent cabin business achieved revenue of 118 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 55.5%, whi

From the perspective of gross profit rate, the three major business segments of NavInfo have shown a continuous decline for three years. From 2022 to the first half of this year, the smart cloud business has fallen from 60.65% to 37.73%; the smart ch

In short, for NavInfo, which is currently at a critical stage of strategic transformation, it faces pressure on one side from profitability and on the other side from the high R&D investment that cannot be avoided.

To seize the opportunity of ADAS localization and mass production, since 2022, SDV has continuously increased its investment in intelligent driving and chip development. The financial report shows that from 2022 to the third quarter of this year, SDV

To supplement funds and expand market share in the intelligent driving industry, Tetra Map completed a new round of private placement in 2021, raising nearly 4 billion yuan. The financial report shows that as of the first half of this year, the net b

On October 28th, Meng Qingxin explained in an interview with the media that the company is currently in the stage of AI replacement and organizational optimization, with relatively high related costs. However, the main business has seen significant i

According to the China Entrepreneur magazine, currently, the hand-held smart driving orders of NavInfo have nearly 6 million sets with clear production schedule. Meng Qingxin stated that the company is expected to achieve break-even in 2027. In the n

Among them, New Sense may play a crucial role. Founded in 2021, Jianzhi Robotics is an enterprise specializing in the development of intelligent auxiliary driving software algorithms. In order to make up for the shortcomings of high-level intelligent

"It turns out that NavInfo invested 500 million yuan a year in the field of smart driving. Now this part of research and development costs will not be reflected in the statements of listed companies." Meng Qingxin said that this will greatly reduce R

"Jianzhi robots can help NavInfo improve its AI content." Cheng Peng said that the teams of the two parties are still in the process of integration."In the short term, I hope to develop end-to-end autonomous driving through the cooperation of both pa

But there is not much time left for Siwei Tuxi to prove itself in the intelligent driving industry. As intelligent driving enters its second half, except for leading intelligent driving manufacturers such as Horizon, Huawei, and Momenta, mid-level ma

For SDV New, this AI transformation is a battle for survival. Cheng Peng is optimistic. He believes that although the company's current revenue is generated by cloud services, maps, and location services accounting for 70%, he is confident that in th

He admitted that he had suffered a lot, gone many wrong ways, and lost a lot of money because he always wanted to be the first and innovate. Later, he found out that this path seemed to be not feasible. "Since I couldn't learn from Musk, I'll learn f

This article comes from the WeChat public account China Entrepreneur Magazine (ID: iceo-com-cn).