(Yicai) April 24 -- Chinese autonomous driving startup Pony.ai will file for an initial public offering in the United States, according to an announcement on the website of China’s securities watchdog. Pony.ai has filed with the China Securities Regulatory Commission to go public on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, it was announced on April 22. The company plans to issue as many as 98.2 million shares. The Guangzhou-based rival of Waymo and WeRide was valued at USD8.5 billion in March 2022. Backed by the likes of Toyota Motor and Nio Capital, Pony.ai also secured USD100 million from Saudi Arabia’s Neom and its Neom Investment Fund in a Series D+ financing round last October. Pony.ai must update its filing for overseas listing and report any potential problems with the share sale within 15 working days of the IPO, the CSRC added, noting that the filing was only an IPO confirmation, not a guarantee of the firm’s investment value nor investor returns. Founded in 2016 by Lou Tiancheng and James Peng, the former chief architect of Baidu’s self-driving arm, Pony.ai is in the robotaxi, autonomous truck, and smart driving businesses. The firm has research and development centers in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Silicon Valley. The company has deployed self-driving vehicle fleets in China’s four first-tier cities of Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. It had completed self-driving road tests of more than 28 million kilometers as of last December. Editor: Futura Costaglione