To take on giants, self-driving car technology startup Pony.ai raises $112M
Self-driving car technology startup Pony.ai said today it has raised an unusually large early-stage funding round of $112 million in an effort to pull out in front of many well-funded rivals.
The Series A round was jointly led by Morningside Ventures and Legend Capital. Seed round lead investor Sequoia China and IDG Capital also participated in the round, as well as Hongtai Capital, Legend Star, Puhua Capital, Polaris Capital, DCM Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Silicon Valley Future Capital and other unnamed funding sources.
Self-driving car technology startup Pony.ai said today it has raised an unusually large early-stage funding round of $112 million in an effort to pull out in front of many well-funded rivals.
The Series A round was jointly led by Morningside Ventures and Legend Capital. Seed round lead investor Sequoia China and IDG Capital also participated in the round, as well as Hongtai Capital, Legend Star, Puhua Capital, Polaris Capital, DCM Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Silicon Valley Future Capital and other unnamed funding sources.
Founded in late 2016, Pony.ai is building level 4 autonomy technology, a grade of self-driving car technology that delivers “fully autonomous” navigation. Per the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration level system, that means it’s “designed to perform all safety-critical driving functions and monitor roadway conditions for an entire trip.” The autonomous technology at this level is limited to the “operational design domain (ODD)” of the vehicle—meaning it does not cover every driving scenario equal to that of a human driver, whereas level 5 autonomous technology would.
The round is all the more interesting because Pony.ai isn’t well-known. But it is led by former engineers from both Google X (now Waymo) and Baidu Inc. Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer James Peng was previously chief architect at Baidu’s self-driving car division and before that a Google employee. Tiancheng Lou, co-founder and chief technology officer, previously worked on autonomous driving at both Google X and Baidu.
In an interview with SiliconANGLE, Peng said the large round was a reflection of the highly competitive market. “The competition for talent is fierce,” he said. “Also, self-driving car development is costly, so we need to ramp up quickly.” The company has nearly 70 people on staff so far, a figure that is expected to rise rapidly.
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