Pony.ai

Pony.ai, established in 2016 in Silicon Valley, focuses on developing safe and reliable autonomous driving technology worldwide. The company operates three business units: Robotaxi, Robotruck, and Personally Owned Vehicles (POV). Pony.ai has accumulated millions of kilometers in autonomous road testing under complex scenarios, with its vehicles traveling over 32 million kilometers on urban roads and highways as of April 2024. It was the first to launch and offer a public-facing Robotaxi service in California and China and has secured licenses to test and operate autonomous vehicles in multiple global locations. The company received a city-level Shenzhen permit for driver-out autonomous testing and was recognized on the XPRIZE and Bessemer Venture Partners XB100 2023 list, ranking #12 among the top 100 private deep tech companies globally. Pony.ai signed an MoU with Luxembourg to advance autonomous mobility in Europe and launched a robotaxi service to Beijing Daxing International Airport. It became the first in China to secure a cross-provincial robotruck permit and began testing on the Beijing-Tianjin-Tanggu Expressway. The company received a $100 million investment from the NEOM Investment Fund to activate autonomous vehicles in NEOM and the Middle East and formed a joint venture with Toyota to advance the mass production of L4 autonomous vehicles. Pony.ai’s technology masters various demanding road scenarios in the US and China, using a multi-sensor fusion approach for precise localization and combining heuristic and deep learning models in its Perception module. Its Planning and Control module employs machine learning and deep learning to navigate complex road scenarios. The company developed a self-driving truck system for logistics, launched in November 2022, and was the first to test an autonomous truck on a public highway in China in December 2021. Pony.ai announced three intelligent driving product lines: PonyClassic, PonyPro, and PonyUltra, and developed an autonomous domain controller powered by NVIDIA DRIVE Orin. The company received ISO 26262:2018 Automotive Functional Safety ASIL-D process certification and launched robotaxi services in Shenzhen. It also received a commercial license for freight in China, formed a strategic partnership with FAW in autonomous driving technology, established an R&D hub in Shanghai, and received licenses to test autonomous vehicles carrying passengers on Beijing’s roads. Additionally, Pony.ai partnered with e-commerce platform Yamibuy to provide autonomous delivery service in Irvine, California, and announced Series-B funding totaling $462 million, including a $400 million strategic investment from Toyota.