Pony.ai May Raise New USD 50 Million Round of Funding

Financials, Automotive, Healthcare Author: Feng An Apr 11, 2019 11:07 AM (GMT+8)

After this round of funding, the valuation of Pony.ai reaches about USD 1.7 billion.

Picture of Pony.ai . PHOTO: Credit to Pony.ai

KUN LUN Inc. (昆仑万维)announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Kunlun Group Limited (昆仑集团) intends to invest USD 50 million in Pony AI Inc. on April 10, acquiring 3% equity after Pony.ai’s financing, which also makes the valuation of Pony.ai reach about USD 1.7 billion.

In January 2018, Pony.ai announced the completion of the series A round of financing with USD 112 million. This round of financing was jointly led by Morningside capital and Alliance capital, and the old shareholders like sequoia capital China fund and IDG capital also participated in this investment. Other investors include Hongtai capital, Lenovo star, Qichen capital, DCM, Comcast Ventures and silicon valley future capital.

In July 2018, Pony.ai announced that it had raised USD 102 million from ClearVue Partners and Eight Roads, making its valuation close to USD 1 billion.

ZHOU Yahui, the chairman of KUN LUN, said that the future focus of KUN LUN will be to invest in the Internet 3.0 era, namely the era of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence technology will empower various industries and will grow explosively in the next few years. Artificial intelligence will also be the focus area for KUN LUN to increase investment in the future.

KUN LUN believes that the current domestic autonomous driving technology has made great progress and will have a significant impact on human life and travel in the future. KUN LUN said in the announcement that autonomous driving has a great market space, and Pony.ai has the leading technical advantages and stable strong core technical team, so optimistic about its future development.

Pony has obtained the 'production license of autonomous vehicle test program' issued by the California government and the 'road test license of T3 autonomous driving' issued by the Beijing municipal government. Its autonomous vehicle fleet has been tested in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou.

According to the data, Pony. Ai, a self-driving startup company was established in November 2016 and is dedicated to the research and development of Level 4 (S.E.A) autonomous driving technology, namely the research and development of fully automatic driving technology for vehicles under specific roads and environments.

In the past year, the company has carried out road testing in San Francisco, the United States, and set up its China headquarters and research and development centre in October 2017. In addition, Pony.ai will participate in the 18th international Automobile and Manufacturing Technology Exhibition with autonomous L4 full-stack autonomous driving technology (see more in this article). It will be the company's first appearance at the Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition session.