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 The companies are striving to keep pace with larger competitors such as Baidu<\/a>‘s Apollo Go in China and Alphabet<\/a>‘s Waymo in the U.S. amid growing interest in autonomous technologies. <\/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.<\/p>\n In U.S. trading on Wednesday, shares Pony.ai closed down about 2%, while WeRide fell 5.3%.<\/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":3,"featured_media":358859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,68226,738,23001,11732,81,14169,73681,158,19663,67,132,68,73682],"class_list":{"0":"post-358858","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-baidu-inc","12":"tag-breaking-news-technology","13":"tag-business-news","14":"tag-ipo","15":"tag-pony-ai-inc","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-uber-technologies-inc","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-weride-inc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115500535356119463","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}