PONY AI Inc. Partners with Sunlight Mobility to Adopt an Asset-Light Model for Accelerating Fleet Expansion

Pony AI Inc., a global leader in the commercialization of autonomous mobility, announced an expanded partnership with Sunlight Mobility to implement an asset-light model. This marks a significant milestone in Pony.ai’s strategy to build a scalable, capital-efficient, and rapidly deployable mobility ecosystem, enabling the Company to speed up its fleet expansion down the road.

Building on the initial collaboration established in June 2024, Pony.ai has recently signed a new agreement with Sunlight Mobility, a leading mobility service platform operator covering over 180 cities across China, to adopt the asset-light model. Under this arrangement, Sunlight Mobility will fund the Gen-7 Robotaxi vehicles, with an initial fleet to be deployed in Guangzhou before year-end 2025. Both parties plan to further expand into other cities in China in the coming years. This also reflects the growing market recognition of Pony.ai’s Robotaxi business model, with an increasing number of third parties willing to fund fleet deployment and lease Pony.ai’s Virtual Driver for commercial operations.

Also Read: AiThority Interview Featuring: Pranav Nambiar, Senior Vice President of AI/ML and PaaS at DigitalOcean

Sunlight Mobility brings deep expertise in digital mobility platform operations, including huge user traffic, product feature development, and fleet supply dispatch, all of which play a crucial role in enhancing user experience and boosting operational efficiency. In particular, the collaborative autonomous driving vehicle (“ADV”) fleet supply will be integrated in both Pony.ai and Sunlight Mobility’s platforms, making both parties share economic benefits and creating a win-win situation.