With offices in both Silicon Valley and China, Pony.ai was founded by a group of seasoned engineers with deep learning and autonomous driving experience. James Peng, co-founder and CEO, was previously Chief Architect at Baidu, where he oversaw the technical direction of the autonomous driving division and other key areas such as big data and monetization platforms. 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. Dr. Lou holds a BS and PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University.

Though just over a year old, Pony.ai has made rapid progress in deploying its technology; the company’s self-driving cars are 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.

In Q1 of this year, Pony.ai will begin operating an autonomous driving fleet in Guangzhou. In addition to fleet deployment, the company will continue to build key partnerships in both the US and China, and to rapidly grow its team in both geographies.

The Series A round was co-led by Morningside Venture Capital and Legend Capital. Seed round lead-investor Sequoia China and investor IDG Capital also participated in the round, along with Hongtai Capital, Legend Star, Puhua Capital, Polaris Capital, DCM Ventures, Comcast Ventures, Silicon Valley Future Capital and other funding sources. Miracle Capital was the exclusive financial advisor in this round.