China- and U.S.-based Pony.ai stated Monday its valuation has surged to $8.5 billion after the primary shut of its Collection D funding spherical, an indication that buyers proceed to chase an area the place mass deployment of autonomous fleets are nonetheless years away.
Based in 2016 and backed by Toyota, Pony is amongst a gaggle of robotaxi startups which have arrange testing and operational presence in each China and the U.S.; others which have executed so embody WeRide, Deeproute and AutoX. Pony was final valued at $5.3 billion in late 2020.
The brand new price ticket is outstanding given a few of the hindrances the corporate confronted previously yr. A number of key members of its autonomous trucking unit resigned to be part of new rivaling companies after an unpopular administration determination to coalesce Pony’s trucking and robotaxi groups. The agency’s trucking drive within the U.S. has since been dissolved although it’s nonetheless rising its trucking enterprise in China.
In one other flip of occasions in December, California suspended Pony’s driverless take a look at allow following a collision.
As China’s regulatory scrutiny heightened over its tech corporations, Pony reportedly needed to halt its plans to record within the U.S., shortly after bringing onboard a former JPMorgan Chase govt as its chief monetary officer.
Constructing robotaxis is notoriously cash-intensive however Pony stated it’s well-financed. Trucking can be broadly seen as a faster path for autonomous car startups to drag in revenues in comparison with robotaxis. Following the Collection D-1 spherical, Pony stated it now has near $1 billion “stability sheet liquidity.”
Pony didn’t disclose how a lot it raised from this infusion however stated it’ll launch extra info as all the spherical closes.
With a world workforce of over 1,000 employees, Pony is testing autonomous automobiles in 4 main Chinese language cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen) in addition to Fremont and Irvine in California. Its robotaxis have additionally been allowed to begin charging passengers in a pilot zone in suburban Beijing, together with Baidu’s autonomous driving fleet.
By way of use of the proceeds, the startup’s CEO and co-founder James Peng remarked in a press release: “Our technical growth and stability sheet energy go hand-in-hand in permitting us to considerably broaden our hiring in 2022, open up quite a lot of new autonomous car world testing and operation websites, progress our strategic partnerships and quickly develop our fleet.”
