Toyota-backed self-driving startup Pony.ai valued at $8.5B in latest fundraising round

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Self-driving tech company Pony.ai is valued at $8.5B in its latest fundraising round, a 65% increase from its last round.

Pony.ai's balance sheet will now have close to $1B in liquidity with the Series D financing round, according to a statement.

Reuters reported in June that Toyota-backed (NYSE:TM) Pony.ai was said to be mulling over going public to help fund its goal of developing a commercial autonomous ride-hailing service. Reuters also reported in August that the company put its plans on hold for a deal to go public through a SPAC VectoIQ Acquisition Corp. II (NASDAQ:VTIQ) on concerns about China's crackdown on tech companies.

Pony.ai has been conducting autonomous driving tests on public roads in California and Guangzhou, China. Pony.ai is trying to compete with Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Waymo unit, General Motors (NYSE:GM) Cruise division, Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) as well as self-driving startup Aurora Innovation (NASDAQ:AUR), which went public through a de-spacing in November.

"We’re delighted by the financial progression at Pony.ai and the substantial valuation increase to our 2020 C and C+ rounds," Lawrence Steyn, CFO of Pony.ai, said in the statement. "This significant uptick in valuation is a reflection by our partners of our delivered results over the last year and our very specific development milestones for 2022. Our company has always been well funded, and this round funds development at Pony.ai several years into the future - in fact, we believe, up to the window for our anticipated launch of mass commercialization."

Recall in May, Luminar (NASDAQ:LAZR) teamed with Pony.ai on next-gen robotaxi platform.