Pony.ai Brand Guidelines: Robotaxis From Silicon Valley & Guangzhou, Listed Twice

A start-up with two home bases.

Pony.ai, whose Chinese name is 小马智行, was founded in December 2016 by James Peng and Tiancheng Lou, English Wikipedia says; both had worked as software developers for Baidu in Silicon Valley. The company’s own website says it was founded in Silicon Valley, and its formal name is Pony AI Inc. From the start it worked in two places: The Verge described it in February 2020 as a start-up “based in Silicon Valley and Guangzhou,” and Wikipedia now gives its headquarters as Guangzhou, with an office in Fremont, California.

Testing came quickly. The Verge reported that Pony.ai had been testing robotaxis in Beijing and Guangzhou since late 2018 as well as in Fremont and Irvine, California. In April 2019 it launched a pilot service for employees and invited guests over a defined zone of Guangzhou, and in November 2019 a three-month trial in Irvine, Wikipedia says. Toyota became a close partner: the two began working together on public-road testing in 2019, and in February 2020 Toyota announced a large investment in the company, The Verge reported, with the two firms planning to co-develop mobility services.

Its business is organised in three units. Its website lists Robotaxi, Robotruck and Personally Owned Vehicles, all built on what it calls its “virtual driver,” and gives its slogan as “Autonomous Mobility Everywhere.”

Permits city by city.

Pony.ai’s story is told in permits. On 27 April 2022 TechCrunch reported that Baidu and Pony.ai had received the first permits to offer driverless ride-hailing to the public on open roads in Beijing, inside a 60-square-kilometre demonstration zone in Yizhuang, though a safety operator still had to sit in the front passenger seat. Riders booked through Pony.ai’s PonyPilot+ app. A few days earlier the company had won a taxi licence to charge for robotaxi rides in Guangzhou. In April 2023 it was licensed to run fully driverless robotaxi services in Guangzhou, Wikipedia says.

Its record in California was more uneven, and the regulators’ actions are documented. After a Pony.ai test car in autonomous mode hit a road divider and a traffic sign in Fremont in late October 2021, the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended its driverless testing permit. TechCrunch reported in May 2022 that the company had recalled software on three vehicles that March, at the request of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and that the DMV had then revoked its separate permit for testing with safety drivers, over the driving records of some of its safety drivers. Wikipedia says that by June 2023 Pony.ai was testing again in California with safety drivers aboard.

Trucks are the second half of the business. In July 2022 Pony.ai agreed with Sany Heavy Industry to build self-driving trucks in China, and by mid-2025 it was testing large trucks, with a safety driver, on a highway between Beijing and the port of Tianjin, Wikipedia says. TechCrunch reported in October 2024 that the company’s filing listed about 190 robotrucks in Beijing and Guangzhou and more than 250 robotaxis across Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai. In April 2025, Gasgoo reported, it showed three seventh-generation robotaxi models developed with Toyota, BAIC and GAC.

Design and documentation.

Self-driving and lidar companies sell something that is hard to photograph: software that makes decisions. Their public images therefore lean on a small set of recurring pictures. The most familiar is the robotaxi itself — often a white car or van with a sensor housing on the roof and smaller sensors at the corners — shown on a city street, at a kerb or at an airport drop-off.

A second picture is the view from inside the machine. Companies publish point-cloud renderings, in which a street is drawn as thousands of coloured dots, often bright greens, blues and magentas on black, with boxes marking cars, cyclists and pedestrians. Lidar makers add cutaway drawings of their sensors, showing the spinning or solid-state units that send out the laser pulses behind those images, and rows of compact sensor modules photographed like consumer electronics.

The other pictures depend on the business. Ride-hailing services show phone screens: a map, a pick-up pin, an estimated arrival time and a button to start the ride. Self-driving truck developers show tractor-trailers on long, empty highways, frequently in the desert light of the American Southwest. Driver-assist chip makers show circuit boards, dashboards and diagrams of cars wrapped in cones of sensor coverage.

Trade shows are another stage for these images: the CES technology show in Las Vegas and the IAA Mobility show in Munich are among the places where new sensors, concept vehicles and partnerships are put on display. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company — who founded it, who owns it, where it operates and what regulators have recorded — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Nasdaq first, then Hong Kong.

The road to a listing was slow. Pony.ai had planned a New York listing through a special-purpose acquisition company, but suspended the plan in 2021 because of Chinese regulators, Wikipedia says. TechCrunch noted in October 2024 that the company was among Chinese firms returning to the U.S. market after a multi-year pause, with Toyota holding a stake of about 13 percent and Saudi Arabia’s Neom among its backers since 2023. Pony.ai began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker PONY on 27 November 2024; China Daily reported the next day that it was the largest U.S. listing of the year in autonomous driving.

A second listing followed within a year. On 6 November 2025 Pony.ai began trading on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange under the stock code 2026, Gasgoo reported, describing the arrangement as a dual primary listing alongside Nasdaq; Wikipedia calls it a secondary listing. The Standard in Hong Kong reported that both Pony.ai and its Guangzhou rival WeRide, which listed the same day, fell in their first trading. Gasgoo also reported the company’s claim that it is the only firm licensed to offer public robotaxi rides in all four of China’s tier-one cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.

Abroad, Pony.ai has announced plans with partners rather than its own fleets. Wikipedia records a cloud partnership with Tencent in April 2025, a November 2025 agreement with Bolt to bring driverless cars to Bolt’s ride-hailing service in Europe, and a December 2025 plan with ComfortDelGro in Singapore, and lists services announced for cities including Zagreb, Doha, Dubai, London and Manchester; in Wikipedia’s table only the Chinese cities carry full commercial service.

For a design guide, Pony.ai shows how a company with two home bases presents one name to two markets, with an English name, a Chinese name and listings in New York and Hong Kong. Compare WeRide, the Guangzhou robotaxi company that listed in Hong Kong on the same day, and Baidu, whose Beijing robotaxi permit arrived alongside Pony.ai’s. For this guide we use asphalt, graphite and a soft jade with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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