According to the New York Times, Uber founder Travis Kalanick is looking for a way to buy the US division of Chinese self-driving car company Pony AI. Kalanick reportedly works with investors to lend the acquisition, and Uber may even help make the deal come true, the Times reports.
Pony AI was released last year and had a market capitalization of around $4.5 billion before the New York Times Report was released. According to the report, Pony began preparing US arms for sale or spinoffs in 2022, creating a “forked” version of the source code.
With his Pony AI, Karanick returned to the world of self-driving cars for the first time since being kicked out of Uber in 2017.
At the time, Uber was working on its own autonomous vehicle technology. In 2018, one of its test vehicles killed a pedestrian in Arizona. Kalanick’s alternative, Dara Khosrowshahi, eventually sold Uber’s autonomous driving division to auto-carrier startup Aurora. Under Khosrowshahi, Uber has adopted a partnership approach, bringing self-driving cars to the platform from companies like Waymo.
Kalanick has been increasingly embracing robotics in recent years while running his ghost kitchen company CloudKitchens. He reportedly runs CloudKitchens every day if he purchases a Pony AI.
In March, Kalanick said at the event that when Uber was kicked out of Uber, he “actually, probably catches up behind Waymo.” (Uber and Waymo were locked up in a legal battle over autonomous vehicle-related trade secrets that were eventually resolved.) Regarding the decision to sell Khosrowshahi’s division, Kalanick said:
