19th October 2024 | Hong Kong
China Self-Driving Company Pony.ai Files for United States IPO with Last Valuation at $8.5 Billion
China self-driving company Pony.ai has filed for a United States IPO (Nasdaq) with last valuation at $8.5 billion in fundraising round. Pony.ai was founded in 2016 by ex-Baidu James Peng & Tiancheng Lou. Japan Toyota owns 13.4% of Pony.ai, and investors include Sequoia Capital, IDG Capital, Morningside Venture Capital & Legend Capital.
Background of Pony.ai
In 2022, Internet & Artificial Intelligence (AI) giant Baidu and AI tech startup Pony.ai were granted China’s first licenses for driverless taxis in Beijing. From 28th April 2022 (Thursday), Baidu deployed 10 driverless taxis in Beijing between 10 am to 4 pm. In November 2022, Baidu and Pony.ai had been granted licenses to operate driverless taxi with human driver behind the wheel.
Pony.ai – Leading global autonomous driving company Pony.ai, Inc. (“Pony.ai”) is pursuing an ambitious vision for autonomous mobility. We aim to bring safe, sustainable, and accessible mobility to the entire world. We believe that autonomous technology can make our roads exponentially safer for travelers. Founded in late 2016, Pony.ai has been a pioneer in extending autonomous mobility technologies and services at a rapidly expanding footprint of sites around the world. Pony.ai has formed partnerships with leading OEMs, including Toyota, SAIC, SANY, FAW Group, GAC Group, etc. To date, Pony.ai has driven over 30 million autonomous testing and operation kilometers (over 18.6 million miles) on open roads worldwide.
29th April 2022 – Internet & Artificial Intelligence (AI) giant Baidu and AI tech startup Pony.ai have been granted China’s first licenses for driverless taxis in Beijing. From 28th April 2022 (Thursday), Baidu deployed 10 driverless taxis in Beijing between 10 am to 4 pm. In November 2022, Baidu and Pony.ai had been granted licenses to operate driverless taxi with human driver behind the wheel.
Baidu – Our mission is to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Founded in 2000 as a search engine platform, we were an early adopter of artificial intelligence in 2010 to make content discovery on the internet easier. We have also used “Baidu Brain,” our core AI technology engine, to develop new AI businesses. Today, Baidu is already a leading AI company with a strong Internet foundation. We are one of the very few companies in the world that offers a full AI stack, encompassing an infrastructure consists of AI chips, deep learning framework, core AI capabilities, such as natural language processing, knowledge graph, speech recognition, computer vision and augmented reality, as well as an open AI platform to facilitate wide application and use. We have put our leading AI capabilities into our products and services, as well as innovative use cases. Over the past two decades, we have built a diversified portfolio of products and services with large total market opportunities. Our portfolio of products and services is accessed by over one billion devices monthly, and our business spans across an ecosystem of hundreds of millions of users, millions of developers and hundreds of thousands of enterprises. Our flagship product, Baidu App, which is the No. 1 search-plus-feed app in China, reached 544 million MAUs in December 2020. Our usage of a strong technology foundation to support an open platform business model not only draws more participants into our ecosystem, but also adds richness and vibrancy to our ecosystem, strengthening the long-term prospect and vitality of our business overall. Baidu is composed of two segments: 1) Baidu Core, which accounted for over 70% of our revenue in the past three years, and 2) iQIYI, which made up our remaining revenue. Powered by AI, Baidu Core provides mainly online marketing services and non-marketing value-added services, as well as products and services from new AI initiatives, which together powers us with three growth engines. Baidu was listed on the NASDAQ National Market (later renamed the Nasdaq Global Market) since August 2005, and was dual-listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (SEHK) since March 2021.
