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Credit: Qingtian Truck

BEIJING, June 28 (TiPost) —— China"s self-driving trucking company Qingtian Truck is on the verge of bankruptcy after less than two years of inception.

An engineer said Tuesday that employees in this company are currently looking for new jobs.

Pan Zhenhao and Sun Youhan, the cofounders of the struggling company, are former employees of Pony.ai, a leader in the commercialization of autonomous driving in China.

According to public information, Pan resigned from Google in 2017 and joined the newly established Pony.ai as employee No. 12, responsible for the research and development of the sensors, planning, and control modules for autonomous driving. Sun worked at Microsoft and Facebook, responsible for search ad ranking. After joining Pony.ai in July 2019, he was in charge of planning and control of self-driving trucks in California, USA. The two persons left Pony.ai in November 2021 and founded Qingtian Truck almost immediately. Chairman and CEO Pan Zhenhao holds 54.45% of the company"s shares and Director and CTO Sun Youhan holds 35.55%, according to the company"s website.

Qingtian Truck completed an angel round of funding of nearly $10 million in January 2022, with investment from 5Y Capital only. In August 2022, Pony.ai sued Qingtian Truck for trade secret infringement. The source said that a new round of financing was about to start, and the financing was put on hold after Pony.ai sued.

According to Pony.ai, Peng Jun, co-founder, and CEO of Pony.ai, sent an internal letter on August 2, 2022, saying that Pan and Sun had both signed proprietary information and invention agreements, agreeing that the intellectual property created during their time at Pony.ai would be owned by Pony.ai while agreeing to confidentiality obligations. They were required to comply with confidentiality requirements during and after their employment, and not to use the confidential information for purposes other than Pony.ai.

Peng also said in the internal letter that Qingtian Truck is highly similar to Pony.ai in many technical details and business logic, and is suspected of infringing Pony.ai"s trade secrets. So Pony.ai has to resort to legal means to protect the legitimate rights and interests of the company and requests the court to order Qingtian Truck, Pan Zhenhao, and Sun Yohan to stop infringing acts and bear joint and several liabilities for compensation.

With only one angel round of funding, Qingtian Truck is cash-strapped. An update on the website in early March 2023 shows that the company had a startup team of nearly 40 people. Despite being embroiled in an intellectual property dispute with Pony.ai, Qingtian Truck still uses Pony.ai "s background as its important characteristic in the industry.

Excluding the impact of the lawsuit, the instability of Qingtian Truck"s internal team has also become a key factor affecting investors" decisions. According to several people close to Qingtian Truck, CEO Pan Zhenhao"s management ability has been questioned within the company, and he is autocratic and has caused internal grievances. According to Caixin, Sun Youhan, and Pan Zhenhao did not get along in the company, and Sun left Qingtian Truck in May 2023.