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Interface News reporter | Wu Yangyu

Jiemian News Editor | Wen Shuqi

On July 23, Jiemian News learned from an informed source that Pony.ai, a unicorn company in the field of autonomous driving, may go public in the United States as early as September this year, and has now found institutional investors with clear IPO investment intentions.

The insider told Interface News that the difficulty of Pony.ai's listing on the U.S. stock market does not lie in the process itself, but in how to find a listing valuation that can balance the psychological expectations of the founding team, early investors, and secondary market investors.

Interface News has sought confirmation from Pony.ai, but as of press time, there has been no response.

Pony.ai was founded in 2016 and currently has three core businesses: autonomous driving travel services, autonomous driving trucks, and intelligent driving for passenger cars. The company has R&D centers in Silicon Valley, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and has obtained autonomous driving testing and operating qualifications and licenses in many places in China and the United States.

The company was co-founded by Peng Jun and Lou Tiancheng. Before founding Pony.ai, Peng Jun served as the chief architect of Baidu's autonomous driving department, responsible for the overall strategic planning and technical development of Baidu's autonomous driving. Lou Tiancheng is known in the computer programming community for his competition ID "ACRush" and has worked at Google X (the predecessor of Waymo) and Baidu's autonomous driving department.

Around 2016, China's autonomous driving industry ushered in a wave of entrepreneurship. Pony.ai was one of the earliest companies established and also the first echelon in terms of technology. Public data shows that Pony.ai completed its D2 round of financing in October 2023, and then took a hierarchical lead among a number of startups with a high valuation of US$8.5 billion.

As early as 2021, the company revealed that it was considering listing in the United States. However, due to the tightening of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's review of Chinese concept stocks IPOs, Pony.ai's IPO plan has been temporarily shelved.

Today, IPOs in the United States are back on the agenda. On the one hand, it is the normal advancement of the company's financing plan. On the other hand, it may also be driven by relevant investment terms such as the timing of listing.

Pony.ai has previously obtained the "road permit" for overseas listing. In April this year, the China Securities Regulatory Commission website released a notice on the filing of overseas issuance and listing of Pony AI Inc. According to the filing, Pony.ai plans to issue no more than 98.1495 million common shares and list on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange in the United States.

Since the beginning of this year, there has been a clear "IPO boom" in the field of autonomous driving. Recently, according to IFR, WeRide Inc. is considering an IPO in the United States before the end of August, planning to raise up to US$500 million.

In addition, LiDAR solution providersSagitarJuchuang was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January, with actual fundraising reaching HK$877 million, which is said to be the IPO project with the highest fundraising amount in the first quarter of the Hong Kong stock market. Subsequently, many companies such as Zongmu Technology, Horizon Robotics, Black Sesame Intelligence, and Ruqi Travel have successively submitted or updated their prospectuses.

For autonomous driving companies such as Pony.ai, it is difficult to raise funds in the shrinking primary market because they have not yet achieved overall profitability and their valuations are too high. If they want to go public, they can only apply for an IPO in overseas markets such as Hong Kong or US stocks, but the cost may be poor liquidity after listing and a reduction in valuation. This corresponds to a difficult negotiation. Early investors may be able to accept making less money, but latecomers need to make up for their losses.

In addition, as leading companies in the industry, Pony.ai and WeRide’s listing valuations will set the tone for the industry. Behind them, there are still a large number of entrepreneurs and investors lurking in wait for listing opportunities.