Travis Kalanick is eyeing the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving company Pony AI for a buyout. The New York Times reports Kalanick is working with investors to finance an acquisition. Uber might even help make the deal happen.
Pony AI went public last year with a $4.5 billion market cap. It started prepping its U.S. arm for sale or spinoff in 2022, including splitting its source code.
This would mark Kalanick’s return to self-driving tech since he left Uber in 2017. Uber once built its own self-driving cars but shelved the effort after a fatal crash in 2018. Under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber sold its self-driving division to Aurora and now partners with players like Waymo. 
Kalanick has shifted to robotics through his ghost kitchen company CloudKitchens but would keep running it day-to-day if he gets Pony AI.
At a March event, Kalanick said Uber was “really only behind Waymo but probably catching up” back when he was forced out.
He also commented on Uber selling the self-driving unit:
“I wasn’t running the company when that happened, but you know, you could say, ‘Wish we had an autonomous ride-sharing product right now. That would be great.’”
