Autonomous Driving Startup Pony.ai Raises $112M

Dr. Peng started his career at Google after earning a PhD from Stanford University, and he also holds a BS degree from Tsinghua University. Tiancheng Lou, co-founder and CTO, worked on autonomous driving at both Google X (before it became Waymo) and Baidu.

Often more commonly known by his handle “ACRush”, Dr. Lou is a well-known programmer within the coding community – he has been a medalist in the Topcoder competition for the past 10 consecutive years as well as a 2-time champion of Google’s Code Jam. Dr. Lou holds a BS and PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.Pony.ai is building level 4 autonomous driving technology, meaning vehicles can perform all driving functions for an entire trip in both suburban and urban environments as well as inclement weather conditions.

Though just over a year old, Pony.ai has made rapid progress in deploying its technology; the company’s self-driving cars can be spotted daily on Bay Area roads, testing various complex road conditions. The company has also made considerable progress in Guangzhou, China. Pony.ai established its second headquarter office in the city last October, and began testing its fleet of autonomous driving vehicles on public roads this past December.