Travis Kalanick is attempting to purchase Pony.ai — and Uber may assist

Uber founder Travis Kalanick is on the lookout for methods to purchase the U.S. arm of Chinese language autonomous car firm Pony.ai, in line with The New York Instances. Kalanick is reportedly working with traders to finance an acquisition, and Uber might even assist make the transaction occur, the Instances studies.

Pony.ai went public final 12 months and had a market cap of round $4.5 billion earlier than The New York Instances report was printed. The report states that Pony began getting ready its U.S. arm for a sale or spinoff in 2022, right down to making a “forked” model of its supply code.

Buying Pony.ai would carry Kalanick again into the world of self-driving automobiles for the primary time since he was pushed out of Uber in 2017.

Uber was working by itself autonomous car know-how at the moment. In 2018, certainly one of its check automobiles killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Kalanick’s alternative, Dara Khosrowshahi, in the end offered Uber’s self-driving division to autonomous trucking startup Aurora. Underneath Khosrowshahi, Uber has taken a partnership strategy, bringing self-driving vehicles onto its platform from corporations like Waymo.

Kalanick has more and more embraced robotics lately whereas working his ghost kitchen firm CloudKitchens. He would reportedly nonetheless run CloudKitchens day-to-day if he bought Pony.ai.

In March, Kalanick stated at an occasion that Uber was “actually solely behind Waymo however in all probability catching up” on the time that he was pushed out of Uber. (Uber and Waymo ultimately obtained locked in a authorized battle over autonomous vehicle-related commerce secrets and techniques that was in the end settled.) Concerning Khosrowshahi’s choice to promote the division, Kalanick stated: “I wasn’t working the corporate when that occurred, however you understand, you can say, ‘Want we had an autonomous ride-sharing product proper now. That might be nice.’”