Photo/Shetuwang

Apr. 1 (NBD) -- Chinese driverless car startup Roadstar.ai (Roadstar) has hit on a bleak road one year after it raised 128 million U.S. dollars in its Series A funding round, the single biggest investment made in an autonomous driving company in China.

With founders drifting apart, investors demanding liquidation, offices shuttered, the company goes bankruptcy, the first and unexpected close-down in the autonomous vehicle circle, according to self-media "Quantum Bits".

Only silence was found in Roadstar's headquarters in Shenzhen. Reportedly, the office was closed during the work hour and nobody was inside. Boxes were piled by the front desk. A security staff member at the door said, "(I) don't know what's happened to the company, but few came to work recently."

The driverless car startup is now under arbitration between "company and investors", Quantum Bits reported citing informed sources.

The recurring internal scandals and disputes within the administrative team of Roadstar, the company's stagnant R&D progress and the failure of producing actual driverless car have drained out shareholders' patience, according to Quantum Bits. Seeing no hope, investors chose liquidation to avoid losing everything.

In 2017, Roadstar was founded by Tong Xianqiao (CEO), Heng Liang (CTO) and Zhou Guang (chief scientist), all having worked for Baidu's autonomous driving division. But it seems that their compatibility as a team was not as good as their technological experience.

An internal dispute started this January when a statement posted on Wechat accused Zhou Guang of accepting bribes via his former classmate and claimed that the company had fired Zhou.

Intriguingly, at the same time when Roadstar announced its decision of taking Zhou's name off the books, an article was posted on China's version of Quora Zhihu, describing Zhou as an arrogant and narrow-minded person.

But right after statement of dismissing Zhou went public, investors of Roadstar responded that the decision of sacking Zhou Guang hadn't received any approval from investors and was harmful to the core benefit of the company and its shareholders. The internal discord started to show up.

When later asked about the remarks by news portal Sina Tech, Tong Xiaoqiao and Heng Liang said that those were right words to describe Zhou.

In another story about the internal discrepancies of the company's administrative team, Na Xiaochuan, classmate of Tong Xiaoqiao was to blame. It's said that Na, in charge of Roadstar's financing, invested the money into P2P businesses and lost tens of millions yuan at last.

But now, none of the disputes seems important, as the company came to complete death.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn