Chinese self-driving developer Pony.ai gets Series D round funding, with value jumping to USD8.5 Billion

Editing by Xin Lanhua

Pony.ai (小马智行), a Chinese self-driving technology developer backed by Toyota Motor, announced completing its latest round of fundraising, with its market valuation up to USD8.5 billion.  

This is a 65 percent increase from its previous valuation after the Series-C round in February 2021, the company said. No details on the amount raised nor the participants were disclosed.

Z&Y Capital said, however, on its WeChat account that it has increased the investment in Pony.ai substantially, a Yichai Global report said.

The fund raised from this round will be used for R&D, team-building, volume production and commercialization of autonomous driving tech, global testing and operations, output boosting of Robotaxis and Robotrucks, the company said.

Established in 2016, the Guangzhou-based Pony.ai completed the Series C financing in February last year. Since then, Pony.ai has achieved several technical and commercial milestones in autonomous driving travel services. 

The company announced this January that it had developed a complete autonomous computing unit built on the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin™ system-on-chip (SoC), marking a significant milestone in its move from industrial-grade to automotive-grade hardware. This unit will rapidly accelerate the roll-out of its Level 4 capabilities. 

The company has conducted road tests with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin, optimizing the software to run at low latency and real-time performance. The new computing unit will be volume produced from the end of 2022.

In December 2021, Pony.ai became the first self-driving company to conduct autonomous trucking tests on an open highway in China. Meanwhile, it is the only one that obtained driverless trucking road test licenses in Guangzhou and Beijing. In November 2021, the company was granted a commercial pilot permit for Robotaxi. Now it has autonomous driving public road testing permits in all four Tier-1 cities in China.

Pony.ai has set up research and development centers in Silicon Valley, Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai. The firm has secured self-driving test and operation qualifications and licenses in China and the United States.