Brunei, CPE join Series C extension for China's Pony.ai

The first tranche of the Series C – $267 million at a post-money valuation of $5.3 billion – was announced last November. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board took the lead, with additional contributions from Fidelity China Special Situations, ClearVue Partners, Eight Roads, 5Y Capital, and state-owned carmaker FAW Group.

That round came eight months after a $462 million commitment led by Toyota Motor Corporation. It was touted as the largest single investment yet made in a Chinese autonomous driving company – until Didi Chuxing surpassed it by raising $500 million for its self-driving car unit.

Established in 2016, Pony is best known for its robotaxi pilot programs in the US and China, which have covered more than 3.5 million kilometers since 2018. The company is also working with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other stakeholders on projects like the standardization of autonomous driving technology and automated trucking for the long-haul logistics markets.

Pony and direct competitor WeRide are essentially the Chinese equivalents of Google-owned Waymo. Both are leaders in level four (L4) autonomous driving – the car is fully autonomous in certain environments, but it still needs a driver in the seat – and both were spin-outs from Baidu in 2016 and 2017, respectively.

Baidu has since repositioned itself as a service provider to the entire industry, developing an open-source autonomous driving platform called Apollo. Tencent Holdings has adopted a similar strategy. Meanwhile, Didi is identified as the most threatening newcomer. It claims to be the only company globally with more than 100 billion kilometers of autonomous driving data.

WeRide and Didi have both already closed funding rounds in 2021. The former secured $310 million across three Series B tranches led by Chinese electric bus manufacturer Yutong Group, taking its total funding to $500 million. The latter raised $300 million led by IDG Capital, with CPE also taking part.

Pony’s collaboration with OEMs – for example, it is trialing a suite of software and hardware with FAW’s heavy truck division Jiefang – reflects a business diversification intended to deliver more immediate returns. The race to mainstream commercialization of robotaxis, which is contingent on the human safety driver being removed – is a long one and so attention has turned to industrial use-cases.

Trucking appeals because of its large addressable market, the ease of navigating highways versus city streets, and the fact that there are essentially no concerns around driver or passenger safety when transporting goods. Several trucking specialists, among them TuSimple, Inceptio and Waytous, have all received funding in the past year or so.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• China
• Transportation
• Brunei
• Citic Private Equity
• Growth capital