A Pony.ai autonomous car.<\/p>\n
Pony.ai<\/p>\n
China’s Pony.ai on Thursday saw its shares drop over 12%, while rival WeRide fell nearly 8% as the autonomous driving companies began trading in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
Pony.ai<\/a> and WeRide<\/a>, which are already listed in the U.S., raised 6.71 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $860 million) and HK$2.39 billion, respectively in their initial public offerings.<\/p>\n There has been growing investor interest in autonomous technologies with WeRide and Pony.ai aiming to keep pace with larger competitors such as Baidu<\/a>‘s Apollo Go in China and Alphabet<\/a>‘s Waymo in the U.S.<\/p>\n Pony.ai and WeRide, both headquartered in Guangzhou, China, stated that funds would go toward scaling efforts, and the development of Level 4 autonomous driving \u2014 a measure of driving automation that does not require human monitoring or intervention under specific environments.\u00a0<\/p>\n WeRide CEO Tony Xu Han told CNBC that proceeds from the latest fundraising would also be used to boost the company’s artificial intelligence capabilities and data center capacity.<\/p>\n The listings in Hong Kong come as the companies seek to expand outside of China, where they have already begun operating fully autonomous robotaxis in some cities.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new regions include the Middle East, Europe and Asian countries such as Singapore. They have yet to receive full approvals to operate their robotaxis in most of those regions.<\/p>\n In the U.S., both companies are aiming for a partnership with California-based Uber<\/a> to allow them to deploy their robotaxis on the firm’s ride-hailing platform after receiving regulatory approval. \u00a0<\/p>\n However, their U.S. plans face headwinds as earlier this year the government finalized a rule effectively<\/a> banning Chinese technology in connected vehicles, including self-driving systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n “With the uncertainty in the markets around the world and the fact that there would be intense scrutiny on a Pony or WeRide trying to enter the U.S. market, a dual listing is a lot about risk mitigation,” said Tu Le, founder and managing director at Sino Auto Insights.\u00a0<\/p>\n He added that the listings were also an acknowledgement that it’s gonna take a lot of capital and an endorsement of a market outside the U.S. for Pony.ai and WeRide to succeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hong Kong\u00a0IPO shift<\/p>\n Pony.ai and WeRide’s competing listings highlight a recent trend of Chinese companies seeking dual listings in Hong Kong, which has been a bounce-back year for the city’s IPO market.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The companies received approval from Hong Kong regulators to dual list in mid-October.\u00a0<\/p>\n “For the HK stock exchange, clustering the listing at the same time helps to reinforce investor perception of HK as a tech-hub for Asia-focused technology companies,” Rolf Bulk, equity research analyst at New Street Research told CNBC.\u00a0<\/p>\n In May, Chinese battery manufacturer and technology company CATL completed a secondary listing in Hong Kong, raising $5.2 billion<\/a> in the world’s largest IPO so far this year.<\/p>\n The growing trend emerges amid geopolitical tensions and regulatory uncertainty in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to New Street Research’s Bulk, the Hong Kong listings for Pony.a<\/a>i and WeRide will help the companies gain access to Asia-based capital and expand their presence in China and the region.<\/p>\n “However, it will do nothing to advance the progress of their technology stack and regulatory approvals in Western markets. If anything, gaining approval in Western markets may be more challenging with a HK secondary listing,” he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n The listings could also help the firms keep up with competitors such as Baidu<\/a>‘s Apollo Go in China and Alphabet<\/a>‘s Waymo in the U.S., which currently have larger fleets.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Pony and WeRide are right up there among the global leaders,” said Sino Auto Insights’ Le.\u00a0“WeRide has diversified their service portfolio a bit more but they both see Uber and the Middle East as two viable partners in their ability to get more pilots launched outside of China.”<\/p>\n “Investors should pay special attention to how their technology evolves with AI and other new tools becoming more mainstream,” Le said.<\/p>\n \u2014 CNBC’s Elaine Yu contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Pony.ai autonomous car. Pony.ai China’s Pony.ai on Thursday saw its shares drop over 12%, while rival WeRide…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,1684,343,344,55604,354,357,85,23831,46,75428,125,15574,75427],"class_list":{"0":"post-117765","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alphabet-class-a","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-baidu-inc","13":"tag-breaking-news-technology","14":"tag-business-news","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-ipo","17":"tag-israel","18":"tag-pony-ai-inc","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-uber-technologies-inc","21":"tag-weride-inc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}