In a sign that enthusiasm for driverless cars hasn’t waned during the pandemic, Pony.ai today announced $267 million in new funding. The startup has offices in Guangzhou, China and Fremont, California and has now raised over $1 billion at a valuation north of $5.3 billion (up from $3 billion as of February 2020)…

Former Baidu chief architect James Peng cofounded Pony.ai in 2016 with Tiancheng Lou, who worked at Google X’s autonomous car project before it was spun off into Waymo. The pair aims to build level 4 autonomous cars — able to operate without human oversight under select conditions, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers — for “predictable” environments, such as industrial parks, college campuses, and small towns, with a tentative deployment window of several years from now.
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