Former Pony.ai executives’ autonomous truck startup completes Angel round

Beijing (Gasgoo)- Recently, a local commercial vehicle autonomous driving startup, Qingtian Truck, announced that it had completed an Angel round of investment, raising tens of millions of dollars from 5Y Capital.

Photo credit: Qingtian Truck

Qingtian Truck was established in November 2021 by Pan Zhenhao and Sun Youhan, two former executives from China's another autonomous driving company, Pony.ai's commercial vehicle autonomous driving arm, PonyTron.

Pan Zhenhao was the former CTO of Pony.ai's commercial vehicle autonomous driving arm, PonyTron, while Sun Youhan served as the leader of PonyTron's American planning control team. Their new startup is dedicated to developing autonomous driving truck technologies and logistics transportation.

Notably, 5Y Capital, which invested in the Angel round, was the leading investor in Pony.ai's Series A financing round.

According to the founder and CEO of Qingtian Truck, Pan Zhenhao, the funds will help the company kick start its business, expand its team, and initiate autonomous driving truck road tests.

Currently, Qingtian Truck has a team of nearly twenty members, all with senior experience in the autonomous driving industry. Pan Zhenhao and Sun Youhan are no exception. Pan finished his bachelor's and master's degree at Tsinghua University and worked at Google for over five years after graduation. In 2017, Pan joined Pony.ai as the twelfth member and served as PonyTron's CTO in 2020.  

Sun Youhan, on the other hand, holds a bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University and masters' from Columbia University. After graduation, Sun worked in Microsoft and Facebook until 2019, when he joined Pony.ai.