James Peng, Founder & CEO, Pony.ai. Photo credit: RISEConf, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Pony.ai, an autonomous driving startup, has struck a funding agreement with FAW Group, a Chinese state-owned carmaker, terming it as the first-ever strategic investment by a Chinese state-owned automaker into a self-driving company. The investment from FAW is said to be part of a broader $300 million funding for Pony.ai that’s led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP). Pony.ai hasn’t yet formally dished out new details on the said funding round but has confirmed an investment agreement with FAW.

Before now, Pony.ai was already one of the most funded autonomous driving startups globally, with about $700 million in funding. The company’s last-known funding round was a $462 million round led by Japanese automaker Toyota that placed its valuation at $3 billion. Now, Pony.ai is said to be valued at $6 billion from its new $300 million funding round.

Pony.ai is one of the biggest autonomous driving startups from China and currently runs robotaxi trials both in China and the US. In November last year, the company launched a public-facing robotaxi service in the US state of California and has continued it since then.

Pony.ai was founded in late 2016 and has in just four years grown to be one of the best-known self-driving companies globally. The company was founded by the duo of James Peng and Lou Tiancheng who were previously engineers at Chinese tech giant Baidu.

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