Toyota leads $462m round for China's Pony.ai

Toyota alone has contributed $400 million to what is described as the largest round ever seen in China's autonomous driving space. Pony.ai has now raised $800 million since inception and is currently valued at approximately $3 billion. It will collaborate with Lexus, Toyota's luxury vehicle division, to accelerate the commercialization of self-driving technology. 

The company was founded by James Peng, formerly chief architect at Chinese search engine Baidu, and Tiancheng Lou, who previously worked on autonomous driving development for Google and Baidu, in 2016. It launched robotaxi services Guangzhou in December 2018 and has provided more than 70,000 rides to the general public. The total mileage of the company's autonomous driving tests exceeds one million kilometers.

In June 2018, Pony.ai became the first start-up to secure an autonomous vehicle testing license in Beijing. Last November, it launched its robotaxi service in California. 

Pony.ai completed a $112 million Series A round in January 2018 jointly led by Morningside Venture Capital and Legend Capital. Six months later, ClearVue Partners and Eight Roads Ventures led an extended Series A of $112 million. Then last April, Beijing Kunlun Tech, invested $50 million in Pony.ai for a 3% stake.

Separately, UISEE Technology, another Chinese autonomous driving start-up, has raised a Series B funding round from Germany's Bosch Group. Other investors include Shenzhen Capital Group and CICC Capital. The size of this round was not disclosed.

Founded in 2016, UISEE currently offers self-driving luggage transportation services at Hong Kong International Airport. It claims to be the "only mass-producible supplier" of domestic self-driving logistics solutions for airports. UISEE is also the first company to start the commercial operation of autonomous micro-buses.  

Several Chinese self-driving technology developers have received PE and VC backing in the past 12 months. Last year, Black Sesame completed a $100 million Series B round led by Legend Capital. DeepRoute raised $50 million in a pre-Series A funding led by Fosun RZ Capital in September, while Hesai - a provider of LiDAR, an essential technology for driverless cars, got a $173 million Series C led by Bosch and Lightspeed China Partners.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Consumer
• Expansion
• China
• Shenzhen Capital Group
• Transportation
• TMT
• Morningside Technologies
• Legend Capital