Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company recently valued at $8.5 billion, has filed a trade secret infringement lawsuit against two former employees.
The lawsuit comes months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the United States, resigned to launch Qingtian Truck, a competitor. As they progress through the fundraising stages, China’s autonomous driving startups face increasing pressure to commercialise. They are still years away from deploying driverless robotaxis on busy urban roads on a large scale, but simpler scenarios such as shuttle buses and long-haul trucks have provided opportunities. Pony established a separate trucking division in 2020, dubbed PonyTron. It formed a trucking joint venture with Sinotrans, a freight forwarding company owned by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate China Merchants Group, earlier this year.