Pony.ai officially listed on the Nasdaq in the United States, becoming the first company in the global Robotaxi industry to go public

In autonomous driving, although corresponding models have been launched or tested in various regions, Luobo Kuaipao in China has once become a focus, and Musk's Tesla also has corresponding plans and some models in operation. However, the future development prospects and the new travel concept brought about by this need to be gradually cultivated, and more rule-making and operational data references will become inevitable conventions.

For this IPO, Pony.ai plans to issue 23 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at a price ceiling of $13 per share, with an expected fundraising amount of $299 million. Pony.ai launched its Robotaxi service in 2018, and this successful listing marks an important step. Lou Tiancheng, co-founder and CTO of Pony.ai, said, "Listing on Nasdaq is just the beginning of driverless technology changing the world. Our journey is far from over. AI can not only provide safer and more efficient services but also bring an unprecedented experience, completely subverting human perception of driving."

Pony.ai has received participation in its seven pre-IPO funding rounds from Toyota, FAW Group, Sequoia China, Matrix Partners China, IDG Capital, China Merchants Capital, among others, with a total amount exceeding $1.3 billion. Toyota is its largest strategic investor in terms of shareholding, and Sequoia is the earliest and largest financial investor in terms of shareholding. In terms of Pony.ai's revenue, in the first three quarters of this year, its autonomous driving mobility service revenue was $4.7 million, a year-on-year increase of 422.2%; autonomous driving freight service revenue was $27.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 56.5%; and technology licensing and application service revenue was $7.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 155.2%.

It is reported that Pony.ai has deployed over 250 Robotaxi vehicles nationwide and has launched fully autonomous Robotaxi commercial charging services in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. It is expected that the Robotaxi business will achieve positive gross margin per vehicle operation in 2025. With its successful IPO, there will be more opportunities for future development. In autonomous driving, whether it can be implemented in more markets and cultivate more application scenarios and user needs will be the key to continuous growth.

This year, Baidu's Luobo Kuaipao became a sensation, causing quite a stir and even some driver resistance. Various videos about Luobo Kuaipao also emerged endlessly. In addition, Tesla's Robotaxi officially debuted, accelerating the penetration of high-level autonomous driving. However, the impact of changes in Tesla's autonomous driving concept has not been recognized by the capital market. Nonetheless, with the rise of autonomous driving, domestic and foreign manufacturers are actively deploying, and a transportation revolution is imminent, heralding a promising future for Robotaxi.

The market generally believes that the core stage of autonomous driving lies in the functionality and experience of L4-level Robotaxi. The current technological gap between domestic and overseas is gradually narrowing. Some predictions suggest that the penetration rate of high-level intelligent driving (equipped with dual Orin-X or MDC 610) models will reach 5% in 2024. With further improvements in experience, the penetration rate of high-level intelligent driving is expected to exceed 10% in 2025, potentially ushering in accelerated penetration across the entire industry. The core driver of the first half of intelligentization is the hardware upgrade brought about by the upgrade of electronic and electrical architecture, increasing the value of a single vehicle, with components being the most benefited. The focus of the next step of competition may be the competition between core logics, that is, software algorithm upgrades bringing functional and business model upgrades, and hardware cost reductions bringing increased penetration, with complete vehicles being the most benefited.

This successful IPO of Pony.ai is reportedly oversubscribed after the IPO offering, attracting a certain amount of capital interest. Pony.ai's successful listing demonstrates the gradual warming of the global autonomous driving sector. The market believes that electrification and intelligentization are the major trends in the development of China's automotive industry, with autonomous driving being a representative technology of automotive intelligentization. In the future, the hybrid cooperation model of automakers + autonomous driving companies + mobility platforms may be further unleashed, which is also the key to promoting the implementation of Robotaxi. In this model, automakers are responsible for mass production of complete vehicles, mobility service platforms provide service scenarios and customer acquisition channels, and autonomous driving companies provide autonomous driving technology and operational solutions.

At the same time, we note that Pony.ai has the most ride-hailing and taxi platform partners among global Robotaxi companies, including Ruqi Chuxing, Alipay, Gaode Maps, Jinjiang Taxi, ComfortDelGro, Emile Weber, etc., paving the way for user base expansion for subsequent services and enhancing the ride experience. With its successful listing and certain capital support, it will help it realize the commercialization of Robotaxi, the research and development and innovation of autonomous driving technology, and the construction of an industrial chain ecosystem. With autonomous driving companies like Pony.ai entering the capital market, the Chinese automotive industry has ushered in a historic moment, officially entering the era of driverless vehicles.